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Marriage and Divorce of Astronomy and Astrology,A History of Astral Prediction from Antiquity to Newton

ISBN 978 - 1 -41 16- 8326-6

Gordon Fishergfisher@shentel.net

Contents

Chapter 1. Some Sources of Astral Beliefs

Chapter 2. From Astral Beliefs to Kepler, Fludd and NewtonAppendix to Chapter 2: Newton’s Laws

Chapter 3. Some Astrological Techniques

Chapter 4. From Babylon to Copernicus

Chapter 5. Stoics, Kepler, and Evaluations

Appendix to Chapter 4: Diodorus Siculus (of Sicily), Bibliotheca Historica, Book II, 28:29-31

Chapter 6. Earlier Christians and Astrology

Chapter 7. From Ptolemy to Newton

Appendix to Chapter 7: Pierre d'Ailly, and Newton Again

Updates and Addenda

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Chapter 1. Some Sources of Astral Beliefs

Even a god cannot change the past.Agathon, born c. 445 B.C.E

It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because theycan be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Samuel Butler, Erewhon Revisited, 1901

Who says there’s a past? Show me where it is!

1. The heavens, the ones where the stars and other assorted celestial objects are, were fora long time regarded as the place where the gods are, and the place from which directions aregiven and powers exerted for what takes place on earth. Aristotle said there is something beyond thebodies which are on earth, different and separate from them, and that the glory of this somethinggrows greater as its distance from this world of ours increases. The primary body, he says, the oneat the greatest distance from earth, is eternal and unchanging. For, Aristotle says confidently,surely there are gods, and they are immortal, and everyone agrees they are located in the highestplace in the universe. He avers that the evidence of our senses tells us, at least with the certaintyattainable by humans, that in the past, as far as our records reach (meaning as far as the records helooked at seemed to him to reach) no change has taken place in the outermost heavens. So heconcluded that the primary body is something beyond earth, air, fire and water, which, hebelieved, make up the sort of things and activities we find on earth. This primary body is called theaether, Aristotle says, because it runs forever. 1

2. Aristotle based his theory on the evidence of our senses. He says phenomena confirmhis theory. He also says his theory confirms the phenomena. That is, predictions made with his

1 Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), De caelo (On the Heavens), 269b12- 16, 270b1-23, translated by J. L. Stocks.

In classical Greek, transliterated into Roman letters (more or less), aei thein means “to go on forever”. On the otherhand, aither (often transliterated aether for some reason) means “upper air” or “the sky”, which suggests an origin ofaither from the notion that the upper air or the sky goes on forever, as distinguished from the lower air, called by theGreeks aer (e = eta, not epsilon). One may be struck by the similarity of theo (o = omega, not omicron), “I run” to theos(o = omicron, not omega), “god”, but that may be accidental. On the other hand, Cicero says in his De natura deorum(On the Nature of the Gods) that “Zeno declares that the aether is god - if there is any meaning in a god withoutsensation, a form of deity that never presents itself to us when we offer up our prayers and supplications and make ourvows.” (That’s the Stoic, Zeno of Citium, not Zeno of Elea, he of the paradoxes.) Plato stated in his Timaeus that theaither is a fifth element, and was quite taken with the analogy betweenfive elements and the five regular solids, as wasJohannes Kepler much later. As shown in Euclid’s Elements, there are five and only five regular solids, thetetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron.

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theory were verified by observation. He had an empirically based procedure, contrary to whatsome have said. Generously speaking, his failures appear often to have been due to lack ofinformation, or incorrect interpretation of it; or to phenomena unnoticed or not examined closelyenough; or to new stars (if any were known to him) and comets being regarded as being relativelynear to our earth, perhaps because they showed change; or to insufficient knowledge of thechemical constitution of matter; and so on. That celestial objects are alive wasn't a bad conjecturein the context of what was known, since they appear to be self-moving. It seemed obvious that thisis a characteristic of living entities, although there are some quite sessile creatures. Other motions,then, such as flight of spears or running water, must be caused by some entity or entities, orforces, acting on them from outside of themselves. This suggests that birds and caterpillars, forexample, can move themselves, without external motivation or incitement, when they are aliveand in a mobile condition.

3. That the celestial objects are divine wasn't too bad a conjecture, either, given theoverall regularity and permanence of many of them visible without instrumental aids, over periodsof time which are long relative to human lives. When Aristotle associates the divine with the outerheavens, he doesn't actually say the outer heavens or the stars are gods. He says they are like godsby virtue of their unchanging nature.2 On earth, change is everywhere. The living are born orsprout or otherwise come to be, are transformed or transform themselves, and eventually die orpass away or otherwise cease to exist.3 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 fromabove; when boiled (usingfire) water turns into air and when frozen water turns into a transparentform of earth (the four basic elements in the theory of Empedocles and Aristotle are water, earth,fire and air). Only the stars appear permanent and unchanging, he says. But, he asks, are there anybodies 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 weretaken by many ancients as evidence that these celestial objects regulated or at least influencedvarious kinds of changes on earth. The objects were considered by some to be quite tyrannical,and to dictate events on earth. This extraterrestrial autocracy was taken to mean that one canmake predictions about events on earth. If everything, or at least something, is dictated inadvance, then it is reasonable to try to find out in advance what will happen. Success ofprediction depends on events being completely or at least partly determined in advance of theirhappening. There was an association of the divinity and the regularity of celestial objects withwhat we may rather pedantically call astral determinism, the doctrine that some, at least, of themyriad changes on earth are dictated by stars and planets.4 This, in turn, is associated with the

2 We can get around a potential contradiction here to the fact that Aristotle says stars are like gods, rather than thatthey are gods, by considering divine here as indicating that stars partake in someway of the gods, or by regardingthem as permanent instruments of the gods, or in various other ways.

3 Aristotle also wrote a book called Peri geneseos kaiphthoras, otherwise known as De generatione et corruptione,often rather euphemistically translated into English as On coming- to-be and passing-away.

4 In ancient times, the planets were commonly taken to include our earth’s sun and moon, as well as the planets (intoday’s sense of the term) which were visible to unassisted eyes, viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Theword planet traces back to the Greek word planasthai, to wander, since these five celestial beings, together with

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ancient but perennial (and frustrating) problem of determinism in general. Crudely, the problem isto decide whether or not everything that happens is in some way determined in advance, and if so tofind out as much as one can about how this happens and what will happen. This is notoriouslypossible in connection with movements of celestial objects themselves. The question is, how manyand what kind of changes on earth are determined in advance, and who or what determines them?One may conjecture that that really big and bright object, the sun, together with that smaller andnot as bright one, the moon, and the (other) quite tiny five planets known to the ancient Greeks, areamong the entities responsible, or at least executors under the command of some superior councilor executor?

5. Connections between religion, astronomy, astrology and prediction are very ancient, nodoubt prehistoric. In The Etruscans Begin to Speak, Zaharie Mayani describes a relatively lateceremony5 which unites the three. His description is based on a fresco on the wall of a tomb, knownas the Tomb of the Augurs, which dates from 530 B.C.E. Two priests are seen marking out thebounds of a holy area consisting of a square in which two medians were marked, one running fromnorth to south and the other from east to west. The quarters of the square are also subdivided, andeach resulting section is assigned to a particular deity. The square is a kind of mirror of theheavens, since the divisions of the square correspond to a conceptual division of the sky. A priestcould stand in the center of the square and with the help of a speci al staff determine in which zoneof the square the direction of a celestial omen fell, hence which deity was sending the omen. Thusthe holy area or templum constituted an observatory for determining positions of omens whichcould be used for predicting future events. The observations were a means of learning the will ofthe gods.6

6. David Chandler writes: "In the mid-1970s …. Eleanor Moron began studying thedimensions of the temple7 in detail, convinced that these might contain the key to the way thetemple had been encoded by the savants who designed it. After determining that the Cambodianmeasurement 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 dimensions of the temple, such asthe distance between the western entrance (the only one equipped with its own causeway) and thecentral tower. The distance came to 1,728 hat, and three other components of this axis measured,respectively, 1,296,867, and 439 hat. Moron then argued that these figures correlated to the four‘ages’, or yugas, of Indian thought. The first of these, the Krita Yuga, was a supposedly goldenage, lasting 1,728,000 years. The next three ages lasted for 1,296,000, 864,000, and 432,000years, respectively. The earliest age, therefore, was four times longer than the latest, the secondearliest, twice as long. The last age is the Kali Yuga, in which we are living today. At the end ofthis 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 exactlywith particular distances along the east-west axis of Angkor Wat suggests that the “code” for thetemple is in fact a kind of pun that can be read in terms of time

our sun and moon, appear to wander, albeit with notable regularity, among the stars (not including one being, oursun).

5 I.e., relative to prehistory, or for that matter to the beginning of historical records, or at least those which have been orare still known to historians or other recorders.6 Zaharie Mayani, The Etruscans Begin to Speak, translation by Patrick Evans, 1962, of Les Étrusques commen çentparler, 1961, p. 222-224.7 at Angkor Wat in present -day Cambodia, built 12 th century C.E.

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and space. The distances that a person entering the temple will traverse coincide with the eras thatthe visitor is metaphorically living through en route to the statue of Vishnu in the central tower.Walking forward and away from the west, which is the direction of death, the visitor movesbackward into time, approaching the moment when the Indians proposed that time began. In herresearch, Moron also discovered astronomical correlations for ten of the most frequentlyoccurring distances at Angkor Wat. Astronomers working with her found that the siting of thetemple was related to the fact that its western gate aligned at sunrise with a small hill to thenortheast, Phnom Bok. Moreover, at the summer solstice ‘an observer …. standing just in front ofthe 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 kingwhose name, Suryavarman, means ‘protected by the sun’ and who was a devotee of Vishnu.8 Theclose fit of these spatial relationships to notions of cosmic time, and the extraordinary accuracyand symmetry of all the measurements at Angkor, combine to confirm the notion that the templewas in fact a coded religious text that could be read by experts moving along the walkways fromone dimension to the next. The learned pandits who determined the dimensions of Angkor Watwould have been aware of and would have reveled in its multiplicity of meanings. To those lowerdown 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 withgilded towers rising 60 meters (200 feet) above the ground and above the thatched huts of thepeople who had built it.” 9

7. This lining up of temples could serve utilitarian purposes. Ernst Zimmer reports thattemples were aligned by the ancient Egyptians so they could be used as star clocks. Sun clockswere used for daytime measurement, and the Egyptians had water clocks which could be used dayor night. However, they also determined the hours of the night by noting when certainconstellations reached their highest point in the sky. In order to determine these zeniths, it wasnecessary to known where the meridian was. "This presented no difficulty for the Egyptians," saysZimmer, "since the determination of the north-south and east-west directions at the laying of thefoundation-stone of a temple was among the most important functions of the king. The process ofdetermining these directions was depicted in exactly the same way on reliefs from the 4th

millennium up to the birth of Christ." 10The measuring apparatus used by the king consisted of astraight edge (an alignment stick) bent upward at one end and with a plumb line attached, togetherwith the split rib of a palm leaf. There are tables found in the burial chambers of the Egyptianpharaohs Ramses VI and IX dating from between about 1160 and 1120 B.C.E. which list whatconstellations correspond to what hour of the night, and show a picture of a sitting man. The processof observing the passage of the hours of the night required two such observers, aligned along themeridian.

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. Seneca says of the

8 Suryavarman commissioned the building of Angkor Wat. Vishnu, in the Hindu triad of main gods, is, among otherthings, the preserver of the universe. The other two members of the triad are Brahma, the creator, and Shiva, thedestroyer.

9 David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, Westview Press (HarperCollins), 2nd edn updated, 1996, p. 5 1-52. Andthen, of course, there are Stonehenge and other European stone circles and the like, the alleged alignment of theEgyptian pyramids, and so on and on.10 Ernst Zimmer, Die Geschichte der Sternkunde, von den ersten Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 1931, p. 12.

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Etruscans that they were consummately skilled in foretelling future events by interpretinglightning. 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. In this way, they say,the gods can send messages to humans about what is destined to happen.11

9. Sometimes visions of the future were read in bowls of water. E. R. Dodds speaks ofthis use of scrying, as it is sometimes called, for precognition. This is future-telling carried out bystaring into a translucent or shining object, called a speculum, until a moving vision orhallucination is produced which seems to come from within the object. It is said that only a smallproportion of people will be able to see such pictures. In modern times, the process is best known ascrystal-gazing, but it can be carried out with other objects besides crystals. Crystals don't seem tohave been used as specula before Byzantine times, but the practice of scrying is much older. Inone ancient method, a mirror was used as a speculum (presumably this would guarantee picturescould be seen). Catoptromancy is divination using a mirror or other reflecting object.12

10. In another ancient method, used more frequently as time went on, the speculumwas simply a bowl of water. Sometimes a film of oil (occasionally, flour) was spread on thesurface of the water. This method was known as lecanomancy, meaning "divination by bowl".The Greeks and Romans got this method from the Middle East, where it had a long history. Itappears to have developed from a method in which events were foretold by spreading oil onwater, and interpreting the moving shapes formed by the oil. Evidently prolonged staring at theshapes led to visions in some seers, and eventually the visions in the seers became moreimportant than the shapes in the oil. It was later realized that visions could be induced just bystaring into the water, without the oil. However, the oil was sometimes still used, presumablybecause it was traditional or because it increased luminosity. The Greeks and Romans took upthe practice in the 1st century B.C.E. or earlier, probably importing it from Egypt. By this time, theuse of oil seems to have been abandoned.13

11. A more direct way to know the future is by means of revelation. Among theancient Babylonians and Assyrians (and others), this was often taken to happen in dreams. A godappeared in a "night vision" and sometimes clearly predicted the future or gave clear commands.Sometimes, though, the dream was mysterious, and had to be interpreted. Besides interpretationof dreams, there were methods of divination based on observations of the births of humans, sheepand other animals, especially abnormal and monstrous births. There were techniques based onobservations of involuntary facial movements of people, and on physiognomy, the features ofpeople's faces and skulls. In another popular method, the diviner read the entrails of animalskilled or sacrificed. With entrails in general, the method was known as extispicy or haruspicy, andwith livers, hepatoscopy.14

11 Seneca, Questiones naturales (about 62 A.D.), II.32, translated by Thomas Corcoran, 1971, v. 1, p. 150-151.

12 A. Delatte, La catoptromancie grecque et ses derivés, 1932.

13 E. R. Dodds, "Supernormal Phenomena in Classical Antiquity", in The Ancient Concept of Progress, and otherEssays on Greek Literature and Belief, 1973, p. 186-188.14 ~douard Dhorme, Les Religions de Babylonie et d'Assyrie, 1949, p. 276-28 1.

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12. Divination no doubt has its sources in basic features of animal behavior and learning.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 toperson. The use of such signs can be very helpful in making decisions, and for overcomingindecisiveness. In favorable cases, such signs are always or at least frequently followed by thesignified, and may indicate caused events. Occasional failures may be attributed to faultyobservation or interpretation of the sign, to intervention of external powers, to chance, etc. Apreponderance of failures may, or may not, lead to alteration in interpretation of the signs, or evenabandonment of a project to use such signs for predictions and projections of future events.

13. Certain decisions based on chance are a kind of limiting case of decisions based onsigns. Gamblers, for example, read thrown dice, flipped coins, dealt cards, etc., and makedecisions based on their readings about who gets to possess certain amounts of money. The signsin this case—the numbers on the dice, etc.—cause money to be distributed in this or that way insome sense of "cause", but not, it seems, in the sense we use when we say, for example, that theearth causes an eclipse of the moon when it gets between the moon and the earth. A person whomakes investments on the stock market according to hunches (which are kinds of signs) may ormay not be gambling in the same way as people who play roulette, depending on the source ofthe hunches. If the hunches are based in some way, perhaps unconsciously, on actual economictrends, the investor's chances of profiting are customarily considered by many to be better than ifthey are not so based. Inside traders (those who use information about future financial transactionsillegally) read signs of a kind which reduces their chances of loss considerably—unless, perhaps,if they're caught at it. We can only conjecture about how many important political, military andbusiness decisions have been made by flipping a coin or an equivalent, or—sometimes reducingthe 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, temporarythough it may be. It can be very consoling 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, regardingher use of astrology to make schedules for the president: "Astrology was simply one of the ways Icoped with the fear I felt after my husband almost died" (referring to the assassination attempt ofMarch 30, 1981). Speaking of an astrologer she consulted, Joan Quigley, Nancy says: "Joan'srecommendations had nothing to do with policy or politics—ever. Her advice was confined totiming—to Ronnie's schedule, and to what days were good or bad, especially with regard to hisout-of-town trips." (Of course, timing is a part of politics.) "While I was never certain," saysNancy, "that Joan's astrological advice was helping to protect Ronnie, the fact is that nothing likeMarch 30 ever happened again. Was astrology one of the reasons? I don't really believe it was, butI don't really believe it wasn't. But I do know this: it didn't hurt, and I'm not sorry I did it." 15

15. One can, of course, have faith in signs of this sort without attributing religioussignificance to them. But, as Walter Burkert tells us, in ancient cultures signs about the future—

15 Nancy Reagan, with William Novak, My Tu rn , Th e Mem o i rs o f Na n cy Rea g an , 1989, p. 44,47,49.

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omens—were often considered to come from gods. The gods use signs, clear or cryptic, to giveorders and guidance to men. Among the classical Greeks and Romans, who had no writtenscriptures, signs were a principal way for gods to communicate with men. Thus among the Greeks,someone who doubted the efficacy of divination was liable to be suspected of impiety orgodlessness. All of the Greek gods dispense signs, and especially the king of them all, Zeus. Theability to interpret divine signs requires special inspiration, and this ability is dispensed byApollo, 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 ofthe seer. A seer is a theopropos, one able to sense—see or hear—the gods. An uninterpreted sign isa 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, theseer with second sight is Theoklymenos, and the tribe which guards the Oracle of the Dead inEpirus is called the Thesprotoi, those who see the gods, the see-ers of the gods. A seer may speakin an abnormal state 16 so a specially endowed interpreter of the words of a seer, a prop hetes, may berequired. Thus the art of interpretation becomes a more or less rational technique, even when thewords of the seer—hence of the gods—are cryptic.17

17. Any abnormal occurrence which can't be manipulated could become a sign for theancient seers: a dream, a sudden sneeze, a stumble, a twitch, a chance encounter, the sound of aname caught in passing, celestial phenomena such as lightning, comets, shooting stars, eclipses ofsun or moon, even a drop of rain. We see here a kind of border zone between divination, andscientific psychology, meteorology and astronomy. The observation of the flight of birds played aspecial 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 intoa special art. How the various lobes are formed and colored was evaluated at every stage ofslaughter. This technique appears to have been transmitted from Mesopotamia, probably in the 8 t h

or 7th century B.C.E. There is an allusion to the practice by Homer. The Etruscans obtained theirmuch more detailed haruspicina (as these gut omens were called) from the same source, not via theGreeks. The inspection of entrails was the prime task of the seers who accompanied armies intobattle. Herds of sacrificial victims were driven along with the armies, although the animals werealso used for food. Without favorable signs no battle was joined. Before the battle of Plataea (479B.C.E.), the Greeks and Persians stayed encamped opposite each other for ten days because theomens didn't advise either side to attack.18

18. The philosophical question as to how omens, predetermination, and so-calledfreedom of the will can be reconciled began to be discussed extensively in Hellenistic times.The discovery of natural laws in the sphere of astronomy acted as a catalyst in this discussion,

16 The word mantis for seer is related to the English term “mania”, but also to the term “mentor”.

17 Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, translation of Griechische Religion der archaischen und klasischenEpoche, 1977, by John Raffan, 1985, p. 111-1 14.18 Burkert, l.c.

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and at the same time produced a new and very influential form of divination in the shapes andforms of astrology. Earlier, one could always try to avoid the outcomes predicted by unfavorablesigns by waiting and hoping the outcome would not occur after all, or by acting or not acting inways which lead to circumvention, or by performing purification, or by praying, etc. Butaccording to some astrological beliefs, outcomes necessarily follow their astrological signs, atleast for events of some kinds. In other methods of prediction, it was frequently important thateven favorable omens be accepted wi th an approving word or vow to the gods in order for them toachieve their fullest efficacy, but it was often believed that in the case of astrological signs,whether or not they were of divine origin, appeals were useless. 19

19. In classical Greece, seers or priests or priestesses, called oracles, were attached toparticular localities where they could be asked to consult with the gods. The localities were alsoknown as oracles, and cults were attached to them. The gods were especially disposed to givesigns in these places. Success in the interpretation of such signs led, from the 8t h century B.C.E.onward, to the fame and importance of certain places which extended beyond the region of theoracle, 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 ofdivination, of contact with gods). The Romans called such a place an oraculum. It appears thatpreservation of oracular utterances was one of the earliest applications of writing in Greece, startingabout 750 B.C.E. Thus the utterances were freed from the context of question and answer sessionswith 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 were always more or less readilyat hand. However, about the same time as actual sayings began to be recorded, forged sayings alsoappeared. 20

20. Revelation is customarily considered to be the basis of Biblical prophecy, both in thesense in which prophets of the Bible predicted the future, and in the sense in which people up toour own time have interpreted the Bible as providing knowledge of their own futures. It is alwaysarresting to remember that the arch-scientist Sir Isaac Newton was a life -long student of biblicalprophecy, and that his last work, published posthumously, was Observations on the Prophecies inDaniel and Revelation (1732). The kind of revelation which is at the root of biblical prophecy isoften direct communication from an omniscient deity. It is only occasionally communicated indreams. In general, no inspection and interpretation of natural events and no inferential reason ingare required. The content, nature and validity of biblical prophecy is, of course, a vast subjectwhich we will not broach here.

21. For some, the age of Biblical prophecy did not end with the prophets of the OldTestament 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. RichardPopkin reports that Nostradamus first asserted that he was a prophet in the Biblical sense, andthat God had revealed future events to him, despite the fact that the prevailing view of theChurch was that prophecy of this kind terminated with the death of the apostles. Nostradamustold King Henri II of France that he was a member of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, the

19 Burk ert , l . c . 20Burkert,l.c.,p.114,117.

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Issachar, which had been given the gift of prophecy.21 Nostradamus was the grandson of twoprominent rabbis who converted to Christianity shortly before his birth. He became a courtphysician, astrologer and advisor. At some point, says Richard Popkin, he abandoned his stanceas a prophet in the biblical sense, and told his son that God had revealed future events to him bymeans of astronomical cycles, i.e. astrology. However, it seems that Nostradamus left noindication of the astrological techniques he used. We have only his completed predictions, inverse form, in his Centuries (1555).

22. Among all the techniques devised by people to predict the future, the concentrationhere will be mainly on ones based on observations of celestial objects. This includes what we nowcall astronomy and astrology. For many centuries the terms astronomy and astrology (or theirequivalents in various languages) were widely used as synonyms. It has been suggested thatastronomy originally referred merely to the connection of meteorological phenomena with therisings and settings of certain stars and constellations. An astronomer, in this sense, was someonewho assigned individual stars or whole constellations roles in prognosticating or even determiningweather, presumably on the basis of accumulated observations. By the 5 t h century B.C.E.,however, a more extended meaning had been given to the term. Socrates, according to Plato in hisdialogue Theaetetus, defined astronomy as the discipline devoted to investigating the movements ofthe stars, including the sun and moon, and the relations of their speeds. This term did not findfavor 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 lifespan to this use of astrology. The development of astrology as understood in most present-daysenses of the word led to a separate term for astronomy in our sense of the word: the term wasmathematics (mathematike). This term in turn was in time usurped to apply to mathematics in oursense of the word. Near the end of antiquity, the circle closed. Once again astronomy(astronomia) came to denote, as it still does, people's scientific endeavors to find rationalexplanations for the nature and motions of the stars. But not until the 17th century of our era did thisreadopted term come to definitely exclude astrology. 22

23. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) distinguished in his Etymologiae between natural andsuperstitious astrology. The former, he says, is just another name for astronomy, while the latter "isthat science which is practised by the mathematici, who read prophecies in the heavens, and whoplace the twelve constellations as rulers over the members of man's body and soul, and who predictthe nativities and dispositions of men by the courses of the stars." 23 In the Etymologiae, themathematici and genethliaci (casters of natal horoscopes) appear in company with many otherrepresentatives of magic. However, Laura Smoller reports that Isidore in his Etymologiaedistinguishes between astronomia which deals with the motions of the heavens and astrologiawhich deals with their effects. But she goes on to say: "The neat distinction between the twowords did not persist, however, and the terms were blurred, jumbled, and sometimes reversedthroughout the Middle Ages. Pierre d'Ailly, for example, fairly consistently used astronomia for

21 Richard Popkin, "Predicting, Prophecying, Divining and Foretelling from Nostradamus to Hume", History ofEuropean Ideas ,v. 5, 1984, p. 117-135.

22 Frederick Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics, 1954, p.3.

23 Quoted by Theodore Otto Wedel in The Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology, Particularly in England, 1920, p.27.

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"astrology" and astrologia for "astronomy." (p. 27). Presumably the reason she uses thequotation marks in to indicate that "astrology" and "astronomy" are here used in some present-day senses. 2 4

24. Lynn Thorndike reports that John of Salisbury (1 120(?)-1 180)uses magica,mathematica and maleficium almost synonymously. Thorndike doesn't translate, but I take these tomean magical art, mathematical art and sorcery, respectively Furthermore, John explains that theword mathesis, when it has a short "e", denotes learning in general, but when it has a long "e", itsignifies the "figments of divination, whose varieties are many and diverse".25 Wedel remarks:"Although John of Salisbury was unusually sane and enlightened in the matter of medievalsuperstitions, he subscribed fully to the patristic doctrine of demonology. The Church Fathers, hesays, rightly denounced all forms of magic—species mathematicae—inasmuch as all of thesepestiferous arts spring from an illicit pact with the devil."26 Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great;1193-1280) distinguishes two kinds of mathematics. One is the abstract science in our sense of theword. The other, more probably called mathesis (with a long "e”, this time) is divination by thestars, which may be either good or bad, superstitious or scientific.27

25. Richard Lemay tells us that John of Salisbury also distinguished between themathematicus, concerned with mathesis, and the physicus, concerned with the philosophy ofnature. The former, according to John, studies abstract figures extracted from nature, while thelatter studies processes concretely embedded in nature. The mathematici are therefore concernedwith 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. InJohn's view, physica had absorbed much of what had long been considered as the proper object ofmathematica. In particular, foreknowledge of the future, formerly the concern of themathematicus, he considered to have become a domain of the physicus. However, in making hisdistinction between mathematics and physics, John was embarassed by the ancient stricturesplaced on mathesis by the Church Fathers, because much that had been linked with mathesis hadbecome the proper concern of aphysicus.28 Thus John indicates not a union of mathematica andphysica, not a mathematical physics, but a movement from investigations based on mathema ticalabstractions to investigations based on the human senses.

26. Michael Scot (early 13th century) often used astronomia to denote what today wouldusually be called astrology and "distinguishes between mathesis, or knowledge, and matesis(without an “h”), or divination, and between mathematica (with an "h"), which may be taughtfreely and publicly, and matematica (without an "h"), which is forbidden to Christians".29

Thorndike states that by the time of Peter of Abano (1250-131 8(?)), the words "astronomy" and"astrology" were beginning to be used in about their present meaning.30 This

24Laura Smoller, History, Prophecy, and the Stars, 1995.25Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923-1958, v. 2, 1923, p. 158.26Wedel, ibid., p. 37.27Thorndike, ibid., p. 580.28Richard Lemay, Abu Ma'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century, The Recovery of Aristotle'sNatural Philosophy through Arabic Astrology 1962, p. 300-307.29Lemay, ibid., p. 319.30Thorndike, ibid., p. 890.

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may be compared with the claim of Frederick Cramer, referred to above, that it was not until the 17t h century that this occurred—more precisely, Cramer places the distinction in the "Age ofNewton". 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, againstvarious theologians and scholastics who had distinguished between the two, that they wereactually the same. 31

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 methodsof prediction as geomancy, palmistry, physiognomy and similar activities. Cornelius Agrippa,author of a famous work on magic in the early 16th century, declared that all these skills ofdivination 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 tocorrespondences postulated between heavenly bodies and earthly substances.

28. Geomancy was especially linked to astrology. The word geomancy is somewhatelastic in meaning, but in a narrow sense it is a method of divination in which a set of 16 patterns isobtained by getting someone (a child, perhaps) to draw lines in sand or on a slate or paper, orobtaining other presumably random outcomes, such as by spinning wheels in such a way thatexactly two outcomes are possible, or flipping a coin, or grasping a number of beans and seeingwhether there are an odd or even 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, orwhether the coin comes up head or tails, etc. Each of the 16 patterns is a house, and the set ofpatterns are interpreted according to various rules. Geomancy, as customarily practiced, alsoemployed the astrological houses, often taken to be 12 in number. Analogies were drawn betweenthe astrological houses and the geomantic houses. According to a leading textbook of the time onthe subject (1591), geomancy was "none other than astrology".32

29. Until relatively recently, astronomy/astrology was commonly compounded withalchemy, magic, medicine, divination and weather prediction by many people. Some peoplestill do associate some or all of these.

30. It has often been conjectured that astrology/astronomy originated in a marriage ofreligion and science. Apparently it was born in Babylonia and reached an apex in the Hellenisticera. Here Babylonia is taken to be synonymous with Chaldea and Mesopotamia, and to includelands occupied at various times by Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Iraqis. In Hellenistictimes, Egypt, and especially Alexandria, was a renowned center for astrological and astronomicalstudies. In a narrow sense, the Hellenistic period ran roughly from the time of Alexander theGreat (356-323 B.C.E.) to the 1 st century B.C.E., when the Romans under Augustys conqueredEgypt in 30 B.C.E. This conquest culminated in the battle of Actium at which the forces of MarkAntony and Cleopatra were defeated by the forces of Octavian. Others

31 Graziella Vescovini, "Peter of Abano and Astrology", in Astrology, Science and Astrology, Historical Essays,1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 23-24.32 See J. D. North, Chaucer's Universe, 1988, p. 234-243.

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make the Hellenistic era run from the time of Alexander the Great to the end of the ancientworld, often taken to be marked by the victory of Christianity in the 4th century C.E., the age ofConstantine the Great.

31. The first extant horoscope is said to date from 410 B.C.E. However personal orjudicial astrology, requiring the casting of individual horoscopes, developed later than omenastrology, the prediction of events involving kings and kingdoms on the basis of planetarypositions and appearances, and on various meteorological phenomena. Personal astrology wasbased on investigation of planetary positions (including the sun and moon) at the time of birth orconception, and seems to have been founded on a thoroughly deterministic conception of thecosmos. Side by side with it flourished catarchic astrology, which only assumed non-fatalisticinfluences on mundane enterprises like travel, marriage and business. Some have suggested thatthe two kinds of astrology, fatalistic and non-fatalistic, have conflicting bases. Either stars exertan immutable or merely an avoidable influence on affairs, although this distinction might not havebeen clearly made by individual users of astrology. However, it is not inconsistent to believe thatstars exert an immutable influence on some affairs and not on others, nor even to believe that starsexert mutuable influences.

32. Although the origin of omen astrology is usually attributed to the ancientBabylonians,judicial (personal, horoscopic) astrology appears to have arisen in Egypt, during theHellenistic 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 thannative Egyptians (whoever they might have been). W. and H. G. Gundel have recorded numerousindications of the Egyptian origin of judicial astrology in Hellenistic texts, including numerouswritings in the collection called the Hermetica, other writings in a handbook attributed to KingNechepso (reigned 677-672 B.C.E.) and his high priest Petosiris, and other

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sources.

33. As to the Mesopotamians, the Gundels say: "The investigation of the sources leads tothe result that for the Seleucid era in Mesopotamia [312-65 B.C.E.] the later much-praisedideological-philosophical foundations of a 'Babylonian' system cannot be established. Theassertion that the 'Babylonians' had considered the grandiose idea of cosmic sympathies as theessence of astrology, and expressed this conception in systematic and technical works and books oforacles, must be regarded as a fantasy of later authors who do not attain real value as sources."34

For example, in their omen astrology, the Babylonians might base a prediction on whether or notsuch and such a planet was visible at some position in the sky, located by means of a nearbyconstellation, but there appears to have been nothing corresponding to a systematic interpretationof 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).

33 (W. and H. G. Gundel, Astrologumena, Die astrologische Literatur in der Antike und ihre Geschichte,1966, p. 40.)34 Gundel and Gundel, ibid., p. 51.

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34. According to Otto Neugebauer: "Before the fifth century B.C. celestial ominaprobably did not include predictions for individuals, based on planetary positions in the signs ofthe zodiac and on their mutual configurations. In this latest and most significant modificationastrology became known to the Greeks in the hellenistic period. But with the exception of sometypical Mesopotamian relics the doctrine was changed in Greek hands to a universal system inwhich form alone it could spread all over the world. Hence astrology in the modern sense of theterm, with its vastly expanded set of "methods" is a truly Greek creation, in many respectsparallel to the development of Christian theology a few centuries later." 3 5

35. What was it that made fatalistic astrology-astronomy survive in the face of persistentonslaughts from the best minds of the Greek world? One answer, proposed by Frederick Cramer,is a faith which was as deep as the skepticism of their enemies—a faith in reason.Astrologer/astronomers and their followers believed that descending through the ages since thecreation of the world, there have been unending chains of cause and effect relations which haveobeyed immutable laws of nature which not even a deity can contravene. They believed, like laterscientists have, that the cosmos functions like a supremely well-designed machine constructed onrational principles and governed entirely by rational nature laws.

36. Certain philosophers of the Hellenistic era found in rational fatalism the faith inreason which scientists of all ages have hoped for: assurance that their concepts of the nature ofthings 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. Thatstars—for instance, the sun—have some powerful influence on people is unquestionable. Fiveother "stars" besides the sun and moon were known whose orbits wandered among the fixedstars—the five then-known planets of our solar system. Weren't these also likely to influencemundane 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?36

37. The fallibility of astrologers was in many cases obvious but instead of probing to seeif the axiomatic foundations of astrology were at fault, many people were inclined to blamefailures on human fallibility. Astrologers were compared to physicians. Who condemns medicalscience as a whole because a physician occasionally makes a wrong diagnosis, and fails to be ableto cure all diseases? It may seem inconceivable to modern minds that highly cultured Greeks andRomans succumbed to the spell of what to some of us seems a monstrous web of truth and fiction.Yet unless we try to place ourselves as best we can into the spirit of a given historical period, wecannot hope to understand it from a point of view which resembles to some extent how a personwho lived during that period might have understood it. The two premises on which the fascination ofastrology for many of the best minds of the time was based, according to Cramer, were these: (1) bythe use of the proper techniques the future can be ascertained; (2) astrology alone is a trulyscientific method for doing this. Today many no longer subscribe to these tenets, but many stillbelieve 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 remembertheir glowing faith in reason.37 It can be sobering to realize that

35 Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancien t Mathematical Astronomy, 1975, Part Two, p. 613.

36 Cramer, ibid.37 Cramer, ibid., p. 28 1-283.

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people who lived in past times had as many varieties and degrees of certainty and uncertaintyabout their knowledge of the world as we do today. Furthermore, today we can only work withwhat 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 likewise interpret reports and interpretations of others more recent than the people of thehistorical period under consideration.

38. The stars move according to patterns, accessible to reason. Do our lives moveaccording to patterns accessible to reason? Astrologers of all epochs have believed they do, andthat the patterns of our lives and the patterns of the stars are related in some way. The underlyingargument may be based on analogy. The gods, or God, rules the stars systematically, likewise herules us. And—a crucial assumption for astrologers—our movements and the movements of thestars—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 ofview, astrologers may fail because they postulate over-simple relationships. As Einstein is reputedto 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 foremostphilosophical doctrines of the Hellenistic era. The Stoics as a whole tried to base their views onwhat they took to be the best physical science of their time, and they did a fair bit of theorizingabout the nature of things. The physics of the Stoics has been viewed as a kind of deterministicthermodynamics. According to S. Sambursky, the cornerstone of Stoic physics is the concept of acontinuum in all of its aspects. Among the later Stoics, a revolutionary advance was made whenthe dynamic functions of fire and air were extended to cover all natural phenomena. "From acertain standpoint," he says, "this may be called a first tentative approach to the conception ofthermodynamic processes in the inorganic world, a conception which began to percolate throughinto the scientific view of later generations." In addition to the continuum itself, the Stoics hadthe concept of pneuma, that which binds matter together. The most significant quality of thepneuma is a kind of tension "by the force of which", Sambursky says, "it becomes an entity notaltogether unlike the concept of a physical field in contemporary science". 38

40. It appears, however, that the Stoics differed among themselves as to the constitutionof nature. According to David Hahm, Zeno, one of the three heads of the heads of the Stoa in the 3rd

century B.C.E., defined nature as "a craftsmanlike fire, proceeding methodically [literally, by apath] to genesis." Hahm emphasizes that Zeno means that nature is fire, one of the four basicelements in the Aristotelian theory of the constitution of nature.39 Zeno's dynamic "fire" suggeststhe concept of energy as used in present-day science. Here Zeno differs sharply from Aristotle, forwhom fire or heat was the most active and important element in nature, but still only a tool thatnature uses to accomplish its ends, and not nature itself.40

38 S. Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks, translated from the Hebrew by Merton Dagut, 1960, p. 132-133,135.39 David Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology, 1977, p. 200.40Hahm, ibid., p. 207.

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41. One of the other heads of the Stoa, Cleanthes, held a similar view, although he seemsto have spoken of "vital heat" rather than fire as the substance that holds together the cosmos.41

Hahm comments that "the most striking thing about the three functions of heat in Cleanthes is thatthey correspond exactly to the three functions of soul in Aristotle"—the nutritive, perceptive andrational faculties of the soul. (Hahm, l.c., p. 146-7.) What for Aristotle is caused by soul, forCleanthes is caused by the vital heat. Finally, Chrysippus, the third of the heads of the Stoa, held thetheory of pneuma which Sambursky refers to. The pneuma according to Chrysippus is a kind ofmixture of fire and air, and it is what the "world-soul" is made out of—for the Stoics believed thatthe universe has a soul, albeit a material one. In Chrysippus' view, it is this pneuma which holdseverything together.42

42. Some of the Stoics were as strict, or stricter, determinists than Laplace. Pierre SimonLaplace (1749-1827) is a symbol of belief in the usefulness of Newton's laws of classicalmechanics for predicting the future and retrodicting the past, on the basis that the future and past arecompletely determined, and completely describable by means of these laws. According toNewton's prescription, this is to be done by setting up differential equations using his laws ofmotion, and solving them to find expressions from which quantitative predictions andretrodictions 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 certainmathematically formulable laws of nature just as surely, he says, as the revolutions of the planetsfollow from Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. When people don't know what links eventsto the rest of the universe, they may attribute them to final causes, goals to which they tend, or todivine purpose, or to sheer chance. But, he says, these are only expressions of our ignorance oftrue causes. An event can't occur without a cause. We make choices only when we are caused to.Otherwise our choices would be the result of blind chance, which Laplace rejects. We shouldregard the present state of the world as the effect of its previous states, and the cause of itssubsequent states. An intelligence who could know at a given instant values for all the forces ormomenta which propel nature, and values for the positions of all the bodies in it, could enter thesevalues 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 thisto be all of nature—could be predicted or retrodicted in this way. However, Laplace says, thehuman mind offers only a weak idea of such an intelligence, as seen in the perfection which it hasbeen able to bring to astronomy and mechanics. By way of comparison, for the Stoics everythingcomes to pass in the world according to an unbroken causal connection, according to a law of fate,in which not even a god can change something.43 Manilius' line, fata regunt orbem, certa stantomnia lege (the fates rule the world, all things exist by law), may be regarded as pure Stoicism.44

43. Aristotle thought there were two kinds of physics, one for the sublunary world, andone for the heavens. Some hold that the Stoics invented astrophysics, in a manner of speaking,

41 Hahm, ibid., p. 142.

43 Cf. Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa, Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, 1948, v. 1, p. 102.4

2Hahm, ibid., p. 158, 165.

44 Manilius, Astronomica, between 9 and 15 A.D.

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because they believed that the same physical laws apply throughout the universe. They believedthat such laws determine everything that happens. Nevertheless, they maintained we are still free inthe sense that we can always choose to accept what is going to happen as Fate and Nature decree,or not. This constitutes living according to nature. Whether or not we do live according to Naturemakes no difference to what happens. What is bound to happen will happen anyway. But how wechoose 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" amongthings, which is what makes divination and astrology work.45

44. H. Rackham says: "The Stoics ... held that the universe is controlled by God, and inthe last resort is God. The sole ultimate reality is the divine Mind, which expresses itself in theworld-process. But only matter exists, for only matter can act and be acted upon; mind therefore ismatter in its subtlest form, Fire or Breath or Aether. The primal fiery Spirit creates out of itselfthe world that we know, persists in it as its heat or soul or 'tension,' is the cause of all movementand all life, and ultimately by a universal conflagration will reabsorb the world into itself. Butthere will be no pause: at once the process will begin again, unity will again pluralize itself, and allwill 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: theStoics even said that the 'Logos' is God. And the universe is perfectly good: badness is onlyapparent, evil only means the necessary imperfection of the parts viewed separately from thewhole. The Stoic system then was determinist: but in it nevertheless they found room for freedomof the will. Man's acts like all other occurrences are the necessary effects of causes; yet man'swill is free, for it rests with him either willingly to obey necessity, the divine ordinance, or tosubmit to it with reluctance. His happiness lies in using his divine intellect to understand the lawsof the world, and in submitting his will thereto." 4 6

45. Auguste Bouch ª-Leclercq says of Stoic attitudes toward astrology: "That whichespecially 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 ofdivination, of which astrology is only one particular form. They never wanted to depart from akind of reasoning that their adversaries considered a vicious circle and which can be summarizedlike this: ‘If the gods exist, they speak; in fact they speak, therefore they exist.’47 The conceptionof beings of superior intelligence that would be forbidden to communicate with man appeared tothem to be nonsense." However, Bouchª-Leclercq says, an ordinary person wants to know the futurein order to avoid predicted dangers. On the face of it, this involves the person in a contradiction. Forhe or she wants to be able to modify what has been predicted to be certain to happen. Some of theStoics "exhaust themselves in vain efforts to reconcile logic, which leads

45 Cf. Jim Tester,A History of Western Astrology, 1987, p. 30, 32, 68-69.

46 H. Rackham, Introduction to edition and translation (1933, 1951) of De natura deorum (On the Nature of theGods) by Cicero (106-43 B.C.), p. viii- ix.47 This employs the fallacy of affirming the consequent, or assuming the converse, but Bouchª-Leclercq says in anote that it is "the citadel" of the Stoics—this is hard to believe, given the acuteness of some Stoics.

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straight to fatalism, with practical common sense, which demands of divination some usablewarnings."

46. It appears, though, that we can escape from this contradiction by holding that whenwe divine the will of the gods, we find what will happen if such and such conditions aren't met— asacrifice 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 whichcase there would be no more place among them for free acts, with freedom escaping by definitionbecause of the necessity of arriving at a decision set down in advance." That is, if some futureoutcomes depend on and can be influenced by actions previous to the outcomes, then theoutcomes cannot be predicted. For if they could be predicted, then what previous actions will betaken could also be predicted, since the previous actions are themselves future outcomes. Thusthere is no real choice possible among previous actions to be taken. 48

47. However, Bouchª-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 orgenerally things of that sort? Does he know what is expedient, does he know what is good, hashe 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 theshipload of supplies to Gratilla in exile, when one said, 'Domitian will take them away': 'I wouldrather', she said, 'that Domitian should take them away than that I should not send them.' Whatthen leads us to consult diviners so constantly? Cowardice, fear of events. That is why we flatterthe 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 wehad received the inheritance from him. That is why they go on deluding us."49 Epictetus seems tobe suggesting 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 unrestricteddivination. No matter what diviners say is portended, we should do what is good, not what is bad.Presumably, then, we are free to choose our moral attitudes to what is inevitable.

48. Bouch ª-Leclercq continues: "The Stoics valiantly accepted the consequences of theirown principles. They used them to demonstrate the reality of Providence, the certainty ofdivination,and they went into ecstasies at every turn about the beautiful order of the world, due tothe punctual carrying out of a divine plan, as immutable as it is wise. But they were no lessdecisive in rejecting the moral consequences of fatalism, above all the 'lazy reasoning', whichalways ends by letting inevitable destiny alone. Chrysippus turned out prodigies of ingenuity toloosen, 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 isin reality impossible, and the future, of which the contrary is also impossible, but

48 Auguste Bouch ª-Leclerq, L'Astrologie grecque, 1899, reprinted 1963, p. 3 1-32.49Arrian's Discourses of Epictetus, II.47; translated by P. E. Matheson, in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers,1940, edited by Whitney Oates, p. 293.

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which can be conceived as possible. All things considered, the Stoic school succeeded in savingonly the freedom of the Sage, which consists in freely wanting what the universal Intelligencewants. The Sage exercises this freedom better, the better and longer in advance he knows thedivine plan."50

49. Here is how it appeared in the 2n d century A.D. to a Stoic astrologer, Vettius Valens:"Fate has decreed for every human being the unalterable realization of his horoscope, fortifying itwith 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 anddeception they make us accept what has been decreed. One of them [Chance] manifests herself toall 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 andgoes around in disguise and smiles at everyone like a flatterer and points out to them manyattractive 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 ofhope they believe that their wishes will be fulfilled; and then they experience what they do notexpect Those who are not familiar with astrological forecasts and have no wish to study themare driven away and enslaved by the goddesses mentioned above; they undergo every kind ofpunishment and suffer gladly But those who make truth and the forecasting of the future theirprofession acquire a soul that is free and not subject to slavery. They despise Chance, do notpersist in hoping, are not afraid of death, and live unperturbed. They have trained their souls to bebrave and are not puffed up by prosperity nor depressed by adversity but accept contentedly whatcomes their way. Since they have renounced all kinds of pleasure and flattery, they have becomegood soldiers of Fate. For it is impossible by prayers or sacrifice to overcome the foundation thatwas laid in the beginning and substitute another more to one's liking. Whatever is in store for uswill 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 kingsor robbers or farmers or common folk or gods, so, too, we must act the characters that Fate hasassigned to us and adapt ourselves to what happens in any given situation, even if we do notagree. For if one refuses, "he will suffer anyway and get no credit" [Cleanthes]."51

50. Tamsyn Barton is somewhat skeptical about considering Stoics to have been as muchdevoted to astrology as has been claimed by some. She says, in connection with the flourishing ofastrology in Late Republican Rome: "Much has been attributed to the influence of the StoicPosidonius on Rome on elite Romans in the generation before Cicero and Caesar in makingastrology intellectually respectable. But, as A. A. Long (1982) observes, the older authorities whoformed this consensus, such as Cumont, were writing at a time when it was fashionable to seePosidonius’ tademark everywhere. Long rightly casts a skeptical eye over the evidence for Stoicenthusiasn for astrology in the earlu period. It is true that in Stoicism the existence of the godsrequired divination and that astrology would suit the Stoic search for natural signs revealing

50 Bouchª-Leclercq, l.c.

51 Vettius Valens, Anthologiae, quoted and translated by Georg Luck in Arcana Mundi, Magic and the Occult in theGreekand Roman Worlds, 1985, p. 349-350.

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the order of the universe, but the evidence is scanty. … This is the period in which horoscopicastrology takes off in the Hellenistic world, and it could be seen as a natural move from othersorts of divination. He concludes, however, that astrology was at most a subordinate feature ofStoic interest in divination." On the other hand, Barton says "Long is surely right to recognizethat the Stoics cannot be convincingly isolated as the determining factor in the rise toprominence of astrology in Rome, though he overstates the case against their interest, in thisperiod. It seems clear that Stoic ideas, as generally diffused among the ruling elite, did lendthemselves 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. "52

51. Laplace's deterministic methods of prediction might well have been welcomed byHellenistic astrologers, since his methods, derived from those of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Eulerand other scientists of their time, would have enabled them to calculate the past and futurepositions of the stars with techniques in some ways superior to those of Ptolemy. Suchcalculations are the basis of astrology, in most any way the term is properly defined. FrederickCramer says that in republican Rome from 140 B.C.E. to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E.,the more a person adhered to Stoicism, the more liable he or she would be to accept fatalisticastrology. The 96 years from the consulate of Laelius (140 B.C.E.) to the death of Julius Caesarencompassed a crucial period in the history of astrology in the Roman republic. In 139 B.C.E.astrologers had been summarily expelled as undesirable foreigners. By the time of Julius Caesar'sdeath, the majority of Rome's upper class had been converted to a belief in it. To a humanist whobelieved 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 regulatedthe movements of the stars and ruled the universe.53

52. Tamsyn Barton says that "It is striking that astrology in any form was marginal toRoman elite politics until the late Republic."54 Barton is especially concerned with relations ofastrologers and astrological practices (as well as physiognomy and medicine) to political power. Itseems sure that knowledge of the future is often related to desire for or use of power, frompolitical power on a large scale down to power of individuals over some parts of their daily lives.What is wanted or expected or declared to be in a future will give, for non-fatalists, opportunitiesto change outcomes, and for strict fatalists, opportunities to accommodate to them. In studying thisquestion for high-level political power in the Late Roman Republic, Barton distinguishes threekinds of forecasting or divination. "First, there was the college of augurs, who were originallyconcerned with interpreting the movements and cries of birds, though by the first century B.C. andprobably for some time before that the auspices were generally taken by feeding the sacred fowl.… Second, there the XV viri sacrisfaciundis (literally, the Fifteen Men for Doing Sacred Things),the keepers of the Sibylline Books, a set of poems in Greek supposedly bought from a prophetessby the last king of Rome … The third group is more confusing. The name haruspices,traditionally associated with Etruria, is used to describe interpreters of both prodigies and theentrails of sacrificial animals. … The keynote of roman

52 Tamsyn Barton, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire,1994, p. 37-3 8. The reference to Long is A. A. Long, "Astrology: arguments pro and contra" in Science andSpeculation: Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice, ed. J. Barnes et al., 165-92, 1982.53 Cramer, ibid., p. 58, 80.54 Barton, ibid., p. 33.

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divination remains clear, however. It was a matter of establishing and maintaining the paxdeorum (peace of the gods) in relation to the city. Divination, like other religious activity, isclosely implicated in political activity; indeed, it is an integral part of it."55

53. A reverent attitude toward the stars was not universal in the Hellenistic era. However, forthe Stoics, the starry sky was the "purest embodiment of reason in the cosmic hierarchy, theparadigm of intelligibility, and therefore of the divine aspect of the sensible realm."56 MarcusAurelius tells us that we should watch the stars in their courses as if we were running along withthem, and that we should continually think about how the elements change into one another, forsuch thoughts wash away the foulness of life on earth.57 But this view of the world was turnedupside down by some of the so-called Gnostics. Here I refer to Gnosticism in a sense intended tocover certain variant forms of Christianity, such as that of Origen (c. 185-255 C.E.).58

54. "On the other hand," E. R. Dodds says, "some modern scholars apply the term to anysystem which preaches a way of escape from the world by means of a special enlightenment notavailable to all, and not dependent on reason." Dodds calls St. Paul a Gnostic in this latter sense,citing Corinthians 1:2.14-15, and observes that the Hermetica, the liturgy of the Mithraists andthe obscure Chaldean Oracles have been called "pagan gnosis."59

55. Simon Magus, Simon the Magician, self-styled messiah, a rival of Jesus, is oftencounted as a Gnostic. Many believe he is the Simon who appears in the New Testament: "Butthere was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed thenation of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great."60 Simon professed conversion toChristianity, but when he saw the apostles Peter and John laid hands on people of Samaria so theycould receive the Holy Spirit, he offered them money for this power. Peter stingingly rebukedhim, telling Simon that his heart was not right before God, and that he was in the bond ofiniquity.61 The contrast here is presumably between the truly religious, who strive to be withoutsin and submit to God's will, and magicians, who strive for power over men, nature and even thegods themselves. Simon sometimes used the nickname Faustus, "the favored one". Jonas says:"...this in connection with his permanent cognomen "the Magician" and the fact that he wasaccompanied by a Helena [whom he said he had found in a brothel in Tyre and] whom he claimed tobe the reborn Helen of Troy shows clearly that we have here one of the sources of the Faust legendof the early Renaissance. Surely few admirers of Marlowe's and Goethe's plays have an inklingthat their hero is the descendant of a Gnostic sectary, and that the beautiful Helen called up by hisart was once the fallen Thought of God through whose raising mankind was to be saved."62

55 Barton, ibid., p. 33-34.56 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 2nd edition, 1963, p. 254.57 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII.4758 Cf. Michael A. Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism ”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, 1996.59 E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age ofAnxiety, Some Aspects of Religious Experience from MarcusAurelius to Constantine, 1968, p. 18.60 Acts 8.9, Revised Standard Version.61 Acts 8.9-24.62 Jonas, ibid., p. 111, 104.

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56. Gnosticism, in one of its major forms, is a kind of extreme cosmic pessimism whichsplits the world into a divine part completely unknowable by man, and a physical part, includingman, which is totally separated from the divine, and was created not by the unknown God, but by aninferior spirit, a demiurge, a perversion of the divine, whose main traits are domination andpower. Gnostic beliefs were considered blasphemous by many among both the classical Greeksand the early Christians. For these Greeks, Gnosticism ran counter to the conceptions of thedivinity of the cosmos, the ordered, animated and intelligent world, in which man, though notperfect, could aspire to the greater perfection of the stars. This perfection is a harmony, a fittingtogether of the parts of the world into a unified whole, which according to mathematicians in thetradition of Pythagoras (c. 500 B.C.E.) produced a "music of the spheres", inaudible to humans,but within the range of human reason (as Kepler so fervently believed), and therefore audiblewithin, like music remembered. Many Christians could not accept the doctrine of the creation ofworld by an inferior spirit, nor the severance of God from the government of the physical worldand man. The rule of the Gnostic demiurge who controls the physical world was taken to be a kindof tyranny, not a kind of providence.

57. Gnostics opposed the deification of the chief heavenly bodies, as found in most ofthe religions of antiquity. The world-view of astrology had evolved among the Stoics fromBabylonian star worship into a religion in which the cosmic is identified with the divine. Thisplayed into the hands of Gnostics. The astrological beliefs of the Stoics required a passivesubjection to a rigid necessity. Hence no value could be attached to the cosmos. The aim of themajority of Stoics was to maintain a neutral attitude toward good and evil, and to submit to whatmust be. Gnostics looked at and evaluated the world of the Stoics from outside of it, and theexperience of the cosmos for them changed from a worshipful to a terrifying one.

58. "We can imagine," Jonas says, "with what feelings gnostic men must have looked upto the starry sky. How evil its brilliance must have looked to them, how alarming its vastness andthe rigid immutability of its courses, how cruel its muteness! The music of the spheres was nolonger heard, and the admiration for the perfect spherical form gave place to the terror of somuch perfection directed at the enslavement of man .... Here we can discern the profoundconnection which exists between the discovery of the self, the despiritualizing of the world, and thepositing of the transcendental God."63

59. Lynn Thorndike reports on a sect, the Mandaeans, derived from or having sources incommon with Gnosticism which seems to still exist, or at least did in the late 19th century. Theiradherents represent the planets as evil beings, and Jesus Christ as a false prophet and magicianproduced by the planet Mercury. They had great affection for numerology. Thorndike says: "Apeculiarity of Mandaean astronomy and astrology is that the heavenly bodies are all believed torotate about the polar star. Mandaeans always face it when praying; their sanctuaries are built sothat persons entering it face it; and even the dying man is placed so that his feet point and eyesgaze in its direction."64 In the Northern Hemisphere, it certainly looks like most of the heavenlybodies rotate about the polar star.

63 Jonas, ibid., p. 261, 263.

64 Thorndike, A History o f Magic and Experimenta l Medic ine , 1923-1958, v. 1, 1923, p. 383-384.

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60. Tamshyn Barton remarks that an "indication of the subversive potential that led tothe repression of astrology [by various Christian authorities] is the fact that the Fathers [of theChurch] also discuss it in connection with heretical doctrines. Indeed, it is the Gnostics whoseem to spark off the first direct attacks on astrology … Hippolytis of Rome (martyred 235)attacked the Gnostics with particular emphasis on their astrology in his Refutation ofAllHeresies, taking his detailed argumentation from Sextus Empiricus. He justifies this excursus,having carefully disclaimed any knowledge of the art: “But since, estimating the astrological art asa powerful one, and availing 'themselves of the testimonies adduced by its patrons, they wish togain reliance for their own attempted conclusions, we shall at present, as it has seemed expedient,prove the astrological art to be untenable, as out intention is to invalidate the Peratic system [ofcertain Gnostics], as a branch growing out of an unstable root.'"65

61. Among the philosophical views of the Hellenistic era, it is the Stoic, with itsreverence for an orderly cosmos, which is closest to that of the physical cosmology of our ownday, even given the uncertainties and indeterminacies of quantum mechanics. The views of theGnostics are compared by Jonas to those of our recent past in which people declare, withNietzsche, that God is dead.66 Gnostics declare that the God of the cosmos is dead. Still, Gnosticsbelieve they can achieve a kind of freedom by coming to know the fix we are in --hence theirname, from gnosis, knowledge. Gnosticism resembles nihilism of a Nietzschean kind, being basedon a view of nature in which there is no reference to ends or purpose, in which values andmeanings can no longer be found, but must be willed by us, when we can. This at least makes ourwills free. Dreadful freedom, the existentialists called it. An estrangement of Man and Nature canarise from believing that nature, like the Gnostic God, is indifferent to man. However, evenestranged from nature, we can find value in nature's orderliness, experienced as beauty, andsatisfaction in understanding and manipulating what we can of it.

62. One of the other great philosophical doctrines of antiquity was Epicureanism.Rackham says: "Epicurus [based] his main theory of nature ... upon the atomism of Democritus,holding that the real universe consists in innumerable atoms of matter moving by the force ofgravity through an infinity of empty space. Our world and all its contents, and also innumerableother worlds, are temporary clusters of atoms fortuitously collected together in the void; they areconstantly forming and constantly dissolving, without plan or purpose ... The gods (likeeverything else) consist of fortuitous clusters of atoms ... But it is impious to fancy that gods areburdened with the labour of upholding or guiding the universe; the worlds go on of themselves,by purely mechanical causation; the gods live a life of undisturbed bliss in the intermundia, theempty regions of space between the worlds."67

63. Broadly speaking, the contrast is between a universe in which there are irreduciblechance, disorder, probabilities, and unpredictability, compared with a universe in which there areorder, law, regularity and certainties, perhaps to the point of complete determinism. It is possible tohave it both ways. For example, a number of American Indian groups maintained myths whichcombined chance and order. For example, Ray Williamson says that the hogan, the

65 Thorndike, ibid., p. 63.

66 Jonas, ibid., Chapter 13.67 Rackham, ibid., p. viii.

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prototype of the traditional Navaho dwelling, appears in Navaho creations myths as the home ofmany different creatures, and also as a place of creation. The stars, for example, are created there."The story of the creation of the stars is central to the Navajo conception of the universe," saysWilliamson, "a universe that is essentially ordered just as the hogan is ordered but which alsocontains mischievous forces of disorder. In this story, Coyote, the trickster, introduces disorderinto the heavens by upsetting the intended orderly arrangement of the stars."68

64. According to Gladys Reichard, Coyote is an exponent of irresponsibility and lack ofdirection. He seems to be an uncontrolled aspect of either Sun himself, or as the child of Sun orSky, Coyote represents lust on earth, thus matching Sun's promiscuity as a celestial being.Reichard says: "Coyote, however, observes no rules. Sun, though reluctant and protesting,assumes responsibility for his childred; Coyote sates his desire and leaves confusion or worsebehind him. Any good that Coyote accomplishes is fortuitous; Sun's good deeds, though forced,result in control. Coyote does all the daring things Sun would like to do—in fact, once did; Sunsecretly gloats over them, but of necessity appears to disapprove Order, the foundation ofNavaho ritual, is reversed in Coyote's character. He threw the stars into the sky in a haphazardmanner, he defied hunting rules, he vacillated between evil and good in the ceremonial assembly, hechose October, a changeable and uncertain month, to be his. Plants representing him in the ritesare unselected, as are his arrow feathers, and his songs are not grouped in order. After the Batshad killed him, they ground up his skin with soil from undesignated places and scattered the mixturein every direction."69

65. Williamson says of the Chumash Indians of California: "For the Chumash the entireuniverse and the supernatural powers within it were constantly in flux. Without supernaturalintervention from humans, the powers of the world could readily produce events with cataclysmicresults. The astronomers of the 'antap cult ... had within their province the duty to seek out thenecessary knowledge from the celestial beings, to foresee the future, and to take the proper steps toalter the upcoming course of events for the well-being of their fellow Chumash For the nativeCalifornian, the celestial realm was a place of power and danger. By carefully timing theirintercessions with the beings who peopled the Upper World, the shamans who understood themovements of the sky could wrest some of the celestial power to their own uses. Because thatpower could also be highly dangerous, the shamans had to be especially careful to watch for justthe right moment, lest they bring ill to the people for whom they strove to understand and use thepower of the cosmos."70

66. None of us, it seems, is important on the scale of galaxies or electrons, at least ifimportance is to be judged by size. Some believe we have not evolved according to a master plan.Many biologists nowadays subscribe to a lack of premeditated design. One might say that amongDarwinists, or rather neo-Darwinists, there are few Stoics, many Epicureans. EpicureanDarwinists, if they are consistent, appear to be left in a world without plan, subject to vicissitudes offortune, though they tend to call it randomness, since fortune has an overtone of outsideinfluence. Many wish to be saved from such a world. Mircea Eliade says:. "It could be said that

68 Ray Williamson, Liv ing the Sky , 1984, p. 162.

69 Gladys Reichard, Navaho Rel ig ion , 1950, p. 79, 183.70 Williamson, ibid., p. 279, 297.

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the promise of salvation attempts to exorcise the redoubtable power of the goddess Tyche(Chance; Latin, Fortuna). Capricious and unpredictable, Tyche indifferently brings good or evil...............[To overcome this] Destiny ends by being associated with astral fatalism. The existence ofindividuals as well as the duration of cities and states is determined by the stars. This doctrine and,with it, astrology—the technique that applies its principles—develop under the impulse given bythe Babylonians' observations of the heavenly bodies. To be sure, the theory of micro-macrocosmic correspondences had long been known in Mesopotamia ... and elsewhere in theAsian world. However, this time man not only feels that he shares in the cosmic rhythms butdiscovers that his life is determined by the motions of the stars."71

67. Notions of a regular universe are intimately tied to motions of the stars. Pliny says:"For all over the world, in all places, and at all times, Fortune is the only God whom every oneinvokes; she alone is spoken of, she alone is accused and is supposed to be guilty; she alone is inour thoughts, is praised and blamed, and is loaded with reproaches wavering as she is, conceivedby the generality of mankind to be blind, wandering, inconstant, uncertain, variable, and oftenfavouring the unworthy. To her are referred all our losses and all our gains, and in casting up theaccounts of mortals she alone balances the two pages of our sheet. We are so much in the power ofchance, that chance itself is considered as a God, and the existence of God becomes doubtful. Butthere are others who reject this principle and assign events to the influence of the stars, and to thelaws of our nativity; they suppose that God, once for all, issues his decrees and never afterwardsinterferes. This opinion begins to gain ground, and both the learned and unlearned vulgar arefalling into it."72

68. In the Hellenistic Age, Michael Grant reports, "tens of thousands of people weregripped by an unreasonable, dismal, desperate conviction that everything in the world was underthe total control of Tyche: Fortune, Chance or Luck. There was a deep-seated feeling that menand women were adrift in an uncaring universe, and that everything was hazardous, beyondhuman control or understanding or prediction. And so the cult of Chance swept conqueringlyover the Mediterranean " To many it seemed that Chance and Fortune were beyond thecomprehension of human beings.

69. The historian Polybius of Megalopolis (c. 200 -- after 118) placed Tyche at the centerof the world he was depicting because he felt that the taking over of the Mediterranean area by theRomans was an event that could only be explained in this way. "However," says Grant, "hisinterpretations of what 'Fortune' actually means are varied and shifting, like most people's views onthe subject. Sometimes he sees Tyche as everything that lies beyond human control, or displaysno rational causes. Sometimes her name is his label to describe purely haphazard coincidences—or to reflect the fact that anything can happen to anyone at any time. Occasionally there is a hint ofa purposive Providence, or of the old Greek idea, so familiar from

71 Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 1978; translation by Willard Trask of Histoire des croyances et desidªes religieuses, 1976, v. 1, p. 69, 83.

72 Pliny, Natural History, 77 A.D., II.v.22 -24, Latin edited by H. Rackham, 1938, p. 182, 184, translation to Englishby John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1855, p. 23-24. From Rackham's preface, p. vii -viii: “[Pliny's] interest in sciencefinally cost him his life, at the age of 56. He was in command of the fleet at Misenum on the Bay of Naples in A.D.79 when the famous eruption of Vesuvius took place on August23 and 24, overwhelming the little towns ofHerculaneum and Pompeii. Pliny as a man of science sailed across the bay to obtain a nearer view; he landed atStabiae, and there was killed by poisonous fumes."

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the tragic drama, that it is Fortune's task to see that mortal wickedness, or even excessiveprosperity, is penalized. Yet Polybius also views Tyche as basically amoral, and just as likely tohurt the virtuous. But it is in large-scale operations that his Tyche really comes into play: whenhuge and capricious events upset the balance of history, and the fortunes of nations are abruptlyand sensationally reversed. However, when another, rational cause is perceptible, he prefers toinvoke that instead, calling upon Tyche only when no such rational cause can be detected."73

70. During the centuries immediately before and after the beginning of the Christian era,people started to speak less about Fortune and more about Fate and Destiny: "Fate was oftenviewed as a general scheme ruling the world and creating a chain of remorseless mechanicalcausation. Certainly, there wasn't always much difference, in people's minds, between 'chancewould have it so' and 'it was fated to be so'. But some writers, realizing that it is illogical tobelieve in them both at one and the same time, tried to distinguish between them." For example,Zeno the Stoic (d. 263 B.C.E.) saw belief in Fate and causation as the more respectable, and hisfollower Cleanthes coupled Destiny with Zeus himself. The Stoics identified Fate with DivineReason, which determines everything and demands our acceptance. Epicurus, however, believedit was worse to serve such Fate than to serve even the useless popular gods. The wise, saidEpicurus, scorn Fate. Many others felt oppressed by the inescapable and boring despotism ofFate, which appeared to ruthlessly restrict the value of human behavior. Nevertheless, millionsaccepted its tyranny.74

71. "A clear proof that what happens above affects what happens below seemed to beprovided by the visible influence that the heavenly bodies exert on the world: the sun makes thevegetation grow and die, and causes animals to sleep and go on heat; storms and floods come and goaccording to the rise and fall of constellations; and the moon appears to control the tides like amagnet—the laws of tide-generating gravitation being unknown, this relationship (in so far as itinterested the dwellers round an almost tideless sea) was explained by cosmic sympathy between asupposedly watery planet and the element of water in earth. So the whole doctrine seemed to hangtogether neatly, completely, and rationally, in coherence with the sciences. Yet it is based on acomplete fallacy. The generalization that links all human activities, as well as the physicalproperties of the earth, to the heavenly bodies is quite without foundation. The pedigree of this setof beliefs had been antique and complex. The Greek tragic poets described sun, moon and stars asdeities, and Plato accepted this belief, weaving an elaborate astral theology into the fabric of hisideal state. Aristotle, too, far from hostile to a relationship between earth and stars, regarded thelatter as intelligent, divine beings—an interpretation that almost all Hellenistic writers shared.People were learning with fascinated interest about the star-worship and astrological practices ofthe Babylonians, for example from Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390-340); and once Alexander the Greathad absorbed Babylonia into the world of the Greeks, professional astrologers began to transmitand adapt its traditions to the west."75

72. "The moon,” Pierre Duhem says, plays a preponderant role in the astrology ultimatelybased on this principle, and "the laws of the tides prove, with evidence, the reality of this lunaraction and consequently of all the influences which emanate from celestial bodies." Duhem

73 Michael Grant, From Alexander to Cleopatra, The Hellenistic World, 1982, p. 2 14-222.

74 Grant, ibid.75 Grant, ibid.

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shows how one of the most influential of the early Stoic astrologers, Posidonius (c. 135-50B.C.E.), was also much interested in explaining tides. Also, the 9t h century Arabian astrologer AbuMa'shar (Albumasar) devoted 6 chapters of his Introductorium to a theory of tides, from whichDuhem quotes extensively.76 This work by Abu Ma'shar was very influential on Europeanscholars during the European Middle Ages, as a source of both astrology and of the works ofAristotle on nature.

73. The Eudoxus of Cnidus referred to by Grant was one of the great mathematicians andcosmologists of classic Greece. Otto Neugebauer refers to the "oft -quoted remark of Cicero thatEudoxus has written that one should not believe the Chaldean practice of predicting the fate of aperson from the day of his birth", which appears to say that Eudoxus rejected horoscopicastrology.77 However, Neugebauer goes on to observe that "from the day of birth" may not refer toastronomical prediction, but to a practice like that attested to by Herodotus (II, 82), who says thatthe Egyptians "assign each month and each day" to a god and that "they can tell what fortune,what end, and what disposition a man shall have according to the day of his birth."78

74. This view of Neugebauer seems to have been misunderstood by P. M. Fraser whosays flatly of astrology (in general) that "Eudoxus is the first to reveal familiarity with it, eventhough he rejects its doctrines."79 Fraser's chief source for this evaluation appears to be theremark made by Cicero. He also refers to Neugebauer's evaluation, saying that Neugebauer"questions whether this is necessarily a reference to astronomical prediction," without noticingthat this leaves open the possibility that Eudoxus may have approved of some of the astrologicaldoctrines of the Chaldeans. Fraser, like Grant, is eager to separate the scientific from the pseudo-scientific achievements of the Ptolemaic Alexandrians, according to what scientists of Fraser'stime considered scientific and pseudo-scientific. Astrology, along with alchemy and astrologicalmedicine, he counts among the "corrupted" sciences, "superstitions" which have "encroached onscientific thought". "There is indeed," he says, "scarcely a branch of science which did not, in thecourse of time, produce its own bastard—the fruit of a decline in scientific originality, combinedwith superstition and philosophical fatalism."80 There is reminiscent of trying to decide whetherviruses are forerunners of cells or bacteria, or degenerate cells or bacteria, or something else.

75. Grant and Fraser are hard on believers in astrology. Presumably they mean peoplewho believe in judicial or horoscopic astrology of the kind introduced in Hellenistic Egypt,versions of which are still prevalent today. Perhaps, though, they are condemning astral fatalism ingeneral. They may be objecting to an overextended determinism which so many people findmorally repugnant or instinctively incredible. But in former times a kind of compound ofastronomy and astrology was the rule, and separating the two by today's criteria may distort boththe motivation and the legacy of the achievements of the astronomer/astrologers of the past.

76 Pierre Duhem, Le Syst©me du Monde, 1913, v. 2, p. 280- 286,77 Cicero, De divinatione II, 42, 87.78 Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 1957, p. 179 P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 1972, v. 1, p. 435, and v.80 Fraser, ibid.

377-386, 390.

88.2, p. 629, of the reprint of 1984.

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76. One of the great goals of mathematicians, astronomers, physicists and other naturalphilosophers has been to discover and describe quantitative constancy, invariance, pattern, andorder in nature, and, on the other hand, to find quantitative ways to deal with variability,turbulence, randomness and chance. The first of these aims tends to lead them to determinism, andthe second tends to leads them to limitations of determinism. In favorable cases, scientists of thiskind find laws or other devices for predicting future and retrodicting past behavior of physicalsystems with some acceptable degree of accuracy. In cases even more favorable, they find lawswhich require only small amounts of information and time, relative to human lifetimes, for useful orrevealing applications of predicting and retrodicting. Such laws are especially useful when theyare mathematical in nature.

77. "I will not go so far as to say," A. N. Whitehead once said, "that to construct ahistory of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is likeomitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. Butit is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. ForOphelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming—and a little mad."81

78. One may conjecture that development of mathematical thought beyond mere countingwas initiated, or at least strongly accelerated, by consideration of celestial objects. Archeo-astronomers have found increasing evidence that many ancient peoples in parts of the world fromScotland to south of the Sahara desert, from pre- Hispanic Mexico to the Egypt of the Pharaohs,had a fairly sophisticated understanding of celestial phenomena, to some extent mathematical innature.82

79. Development of mathematics went hand-in-hand with development of astronomy. Incontrast with unpredictable and capricious gods of nature, there arose, in connection, it seems,with consciousness of time, a vision of the divine manifesting itself in a temporal dominion overthe precise and apparently unvarying cyclic paths of the sun, moon, planets and stars. Suchthoughts are found in Plato's Epi nomis. Plato asks how we are to get wisdom. He runs through anumber of domains of knowledge—farming, the useful and fine arts, sciences of war, medicineand transportation, and says that none of them constitute wisdom. He asks what single sciencethere is which, if it were taken away from mankind or never had made its appearance, peoplewould become thoughtless and foolish creatures. Answer: mathematics, the knowledge of number.And, Plato says, our knowledge of mathematics comes to us from Ouranos, the god of the heavens.Call him Ouranos, Cosmos, or whatever you please, he is the source of all good things, such as theseasons and our food. And with the sequence of whole numbers, Ouranos gives us understanding.This, says Plato, is the greatest gift of all, if people will only accept it, and let their minds rangeover the heavens.83

80. Similar thoughts are found in Plato's dialogue Timaeus: "Sight, then, in my judgmentis the cause of the highest benefits to us in that no word of our present discourse about theuniverse could ever have been spoken, had we never seen stars, Sun, and sky. But as it is, the

81 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 1928, p. 26-27.

82 See, e.g., James Cornell, The First Stargazers, An Introduction to the Origins ofAstronomy, 1981.83 Plato, translation by Raymond Klibansky in Philebus and Epinomis, 1956, reprinted in The Collected Dialoguesof Plato, 1961, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, p. 1519-1520.

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sight of day and night, of months and the revolving years, of equinox and solstice, has caused theinvention of number and bestowed on us the notion of time and the study of the nature of theworld; whence have derived all philosophy, than which no greater boon has ever come or shallcome to mortal man as a gift from heaven."84 Plato evidently took philosophy to include whatmany today would classify as science and mathematics.

81. Of the Demiurge, the Creator, Plato says in the cosmological myth in the Timaeus,that "he took thought to make, as it were, a moving likeness of eternity; and, at the same time thathe ordered the Heaven, he made, of eternity that abides in unity, an everlasting likeness movingaccording to number—that to which we have given the name Time."85 The phrase "at the sametime" may be confusing. Benjamin Jowett translates: "Wherefore he resolved to have a movingimage of eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this image eternal but movingaccording to number, but eternity itself rests in unity, and this image we call time."86 A little laterPlato says: "Time came into being together with the Heaven, in order that, as they were broughtinto being together, so they may be dissolved together, if ever their dissolution should come topass."87

82. But consciousness of time brings consciousness of aging and death. This incitescountermeasures, such as a paradise lost in the past, or a heaven and hell to go to, or an end oftime, or attempts to preserve the present with all its blemishes, or a changeless world of ideas, or abetter or worse world to come on earth. The ancient Iranians, for example, developed a religion,Zoroastrianism, in which it was held that the world was created in a year, and each subsequentyear was a repetition of the year of creation. Yet they also envisaged a continual struggle betweenforces of good and evil, represented by the gods Ahura Mazda (later, Ormazd) and Ahriman, whichwould eventually be decided in favor of good. Inasmuch as each year repeats the year of creation,the time of the Iranians was periodic. The world eternally returns to its beginning, and starts anew.But inasmuch as the battle between good and evil will eventually end with the victory of good, thetime of the Iranians was pointed along a line toward a future goal.

83. It appears, then, that ideas of time have been intimately related to ideas about celestialmotions, and hence to views of determinism. There were various ideas about time in the ancientworld. The ancient Jews tended to concentrate on a future which would bring new things. Thismay be taken to imply a time line, rather than a time circle of the sort one needs for periodicity andcycles and repetition of the same events over and over. The prophet Isaiah says in the Bible:"Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a newthing."88 And later: "The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moongive light to you by night; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be yourglory. Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be youreverlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be righteous;they shall possess the land for ever, the shoot of my planting, the work of my

84 Plato, Timaeus, 47a-b, translated by Francis Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, 1937, p. 157-158 of 1957 edition.)

85 Plato, Timaeus, 37d, translated by Francis Cornford in Plato's Cosmology, 1937, p. 98 of 1957 reprint.86p. 1167 of The Collected Dialogues of Plato, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 1961. 87

Timaeus, 38b.88Isaiah, 43.18, Revised Standard Version.

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hands, that I might be glorified. The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mightynation; I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it."89 Thus the periodic and repetitious movements ofcelestial objects will cease, and time will flow only forward—or cease altogether. In themeantime, we will go forward in time and history to approach the consummation—no turningback.

84. This looking into the future by the Jewish prophets is quite unlike the astrologicalprediction which grew up in Babylonia and other nearby cultures. In astronomy, the future iscalculated, or based on calculations, as when an equinox or eclipse or sunrise or tide is predicted. Inastrology, predictions of the future are based on astronomical calculations. But in biblicalprophecy, the future is beheld, proclaimed, believed in. Furthermore, the prophets looked forwardin a kind of linear time. The tacit use of a linear rather than a circular time generated a lookingbackward as well as forward, to see when it all began. Certain ancient Jews settled on the dateOctober 7, 3761 B.C.E. of the Christian calendar for the beginning of the world. The officialcalendar of present-day Israel is built around this date. Today's scientific cosmologists put thedate of creation (the so-called "big bang") earlier, at around 15 thousand million years ago, giveor take 5 million years or so The time intervals are different, but the principle is the same.

85. We hear of an Eden far off in time, and ancient Greeks spoke of an island of theblessed far off in the western sea and of hyperboreans who live far to the north in a region ofsunshine and everlasting spring, beyond the northern wind. The tendency of ancient Greekstoward spatialization of ideas, and limitation of time as far as possible to the present, point to apreference for the constant and enduring, and for order and harmony. Rudolf Wendorff says thatin thinking about how change occurs and has to be overcome, the Greek philosophers generallytook one or more of the following approaches: (1) they looked the other way, or didn't take timeseriously; (2) they contrasted temporal becoming with timeless being so time becomes secondaryand derived; (3) they tried to keep change under control by means of unvarying laws or principlesthat don't allow for accidents and arbitrariness; 4) they tamed time, up to a point, by concentratingon cyclical repetition of processes that allow motion in time but preclude a "goingbeyond-thebanks" onto a linear time going to infinity, in which there are always completely new andunpredictable possibilities.90

86. For Parmenides (early 500's B.C.E.), time is an illusion. Only in myths, he wrote, isthere an origin of the universe in time, and a genesis of being. For reason (logos), the veryquestion about such an origin loses its meaning. Being, the material of reason (so to speak), isunborn, unchanging, immovable, eternal. Being never was or will be. It is totally present now,one and indivisible.

87. I propose to take astrology seriously here. Patrick Curry says that until quiterecently, "Astrology was customarily regarded an inseparable mixture of what is nowdistinguished between as 'science' and 'mathematics' on the one hand, and 'magic' on the other.The former elements makes it difficult for historians of science to avoid completely; but thelatter, equally, makes it (along with alchemy) uniquely irritating. This reaction undoubtedly

89 I sa ia h 60.19- 20 .

90 Rudol f Wendor f f , Ze i t u n d K u l t u r , 1980, p . 56 .

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stems from an often uncritical loyalty of historians of science to modern science. To put it anotherway, the efforts of early modern science to define itself against magic and neo-Aristotelianism hasrubbed off on many of its historians—an attitude aggravated by the continued existence ofastrology, in defiance of scientific enlightenment. This is quite evident in the literature, beginningwith the doyen of history of science, George Sarton, who was unable to mention astrology (inrelation to early Greek science) without descending into abusive caricature, explicitly to hisfeelings about modern astrologers. For this he was reproved by Otto Neugebauer, in a short butpowerful paper entitled 'The Study of Wretched Subjects', which defended against suchdestructiveness 'the very foundations of our studies: the recovery and study of the texts, regardlessof our own tastes and prejudices.'"91

88. "The great discovery of the sacerdotal astronomers of Babylonia," says David Amand,"was that of the immutable constancy of the sidereal revolutions, whose periodicity allows us topredict the return at fixed dates of astronomical phenomena. By accumulating observations, thesepriests were naturally led to the notion of a necessity, which was conceived either as resultingfrom the will of the gods, or as being superior to them. It was in Chaldea that the idea was born ofa Fatality related to the regular movements of the sun, moon and planets distributing good andevil to people. However, this determinism was not pushed to its ultimate logical consequences.The priests believed in the arbitrary intervention of a divine will in the order of nature. Theypredicted the future by the stars. But by purifications, sacrifices and incantations, they claimed toremove the evils and to obtain more surely the announced benefits. In the Alexandrian epoch,certain schools of astronomer priests, very probably under the influence of Stoicism, professed amore rigorous doctrine. Fatality became the sovereign mistress; it governed God himself, that is,the living universe, and with the stars as intermediaries produced all physical, intellectual andmoral phenomena."92

89. Thus was born a religious science or scientific religion compounded of astronomy,astrology, and astrolatry, or, as the Germans say, Sternkunde, Sterndeutung, and Sternglaube,which etymologically suggest star information (or more poetically, tidings from the stars),explanation of the stars, and star-faith. Astrolatry I take to include astral religion of all kinds—worship of celestial objects as gods or goddesses or powers or angels or souls of the dead, and soon. By astrology, concerned with prediction using the stars, I often mean, according to context,something broader than generally understood today.93 In particular, in what follows, when I sayastrology, unqualified, I will oftem be referring to something more general than horoscopicastrology, which is also known as judicial astrology because it is used to make judgments on thebasis of celestial objects. Furthermore, it should be kept in mind that astrology is not a fixed bodyof knowledge which has always stayed the same. Its techniques and visions of the world haveevolved, sometimes progressively and sometimes retrogressively. Its principal aim has alwaysbeen to establish and define relations between humanity and the heavens, and to discover

91 Patrick Curry, Astrology, Science and Society, Historical Essays, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 2.

92 David Amand, Fatalisme et liberté dans l'antiquité grecque, Recherches sur la survivance de l'argumentationmorale antifataliste de Carnéade chez les philosophes grecs et les théologiens chrétiens des quatre premiers siècles,1945, p. 1-2.93 If it weren't for custom and awkwardness, it might be better to say deterministic astralism rather than astrology.

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laws which rule them both. But during its long history, astrology, in its broadest sense, hasassumed numerous forms, and has been a part of many different cultures.94

90. Astrologers and astronomers have long been among the foremost promoters anddefenders of kinds of determinism. In his capacity as a classicist (which is how he made hisliving), the poet A. E. Housman edited the Astronomica, a long poem on astrology written byManilius in the 1 st century A.D. Manilius was a strict determinist, or fatalist, who believed weare ruled by the stars. Housman once said that his elaborate work on Manilius's poem would beremembered long after his own poems were forgotten. However this may be, while Housmanbowed to a kind of determinism, some part of him was free, to judge from this poem by him:

The laws of God, the laws of man, Hemay keep that will and can; Not I: letGod and man decree Laws forthemselves and not for me; And if myways are not as theirs Let them mindtheir own afairs.Their deeds Ijudge and much condemn,But when didI make laws for them?Please yourselves, say I, and they Needonly look the other way. But no, they willnot; they must still Wrest their neighborto their will, And make me dance as theydesire With jail and gallows and hell-fire. And how am I to face the odds OfMan's bedevilment and God's?

I, a stranger and afraidIn a world I never made.They will be master, right or wrong:Though both are foolish, both are strong.And since, my soul, we cannot fly ToSaturn nor to Mercury,Keep we must, if we can,These foreign laws of God and man. 9 5

91. For many years, astrology and astral religions, as well as other studies such asalchemy and theology, were entangled with astronomy. This is the major reason I am in thepresent context taking astrology and star worship as seriously as I take astronomy andmathematics. There are, of course, many who feel that a study of the history of astrology is awaste of time, as well as quite a number who do not. However, I agree with Patrick Curry who, inhis study of astrology in 17th and 18th century England, rejects the idea of considering astrologyto be "simply one of history's 'losers' ".96 In my view, we distort history if we

94 Cf. Jacques Halbronn, Le Monde Ju if et l'Astrologie, Histoire d'un vieux couple, 1979, p. 8.

95 A. E. Housman, The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman, 1939, from Last Poems, 1922, XII.96Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power, Astrology in Early Modern England, 1989, p. 3.

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separate the star worship and astrology of the past from the history of astronomy as presentlypracticed.

92. Fortunately, I will not be concerned with truth or falsity or probability of astrologicalclaims. Those interested in such matters may wish to consult the works of the psychologist MichelGauquelin. For more than 30 years, he made a series of statistical studies of birth data in anattempt to prove or disprove that there is a positive correlation between the positions of planets inthe sky at birth, and subsequent characteristics of the person born, as indicated by his or hersuccess in various professions.97 In the process, he has cast considerable doubt on the efficacy oftraditional astrological practices. Some consider that he has definitively refuted the claims ofhoroscopic astrologers with solid statistical evidence. However, he also claims to have foundstatistical evidence for some influence of planets on people's character, that is, on theirprofessional success.

93. As far as I know, no satisfactory explanation of the effect apparently detected byGauqelin has yet been given. Many proposals have been made, including some offered tentativelyby Gauquelin himself. For example, Percy Seymour, an astronomer (not astrologer in a modernsense!), described in 1988 "how the planets control the overall direction of the solar magneticfield near the poles, and how conjunctions, oppositions and squares of the planets as seen from theSun control the onset of violent storms on the Sun," and "how solar activity is linked togeomagnetic activity, the northern and southern lights, short-term terrestrial weather and long-term climate." From this, Seymour proceeds to a very briefly stated and (I think) largelyunsupported hypothesis according to which "it is possible for post-natal fluctuations of thegeomagnetic field to recall, via its own 'machine code' [as in computers], some of the pre-natalprogramming which it fed into the brain of the developing foetus, and thus influence its behaviourin certain circumstances."98

94. On the other hand Gauquelin himself says: "Astrology has always remained enigmaticand, to the perfectly proper question, 'Should one believe it?', I can only answer by rejecting boththe unconditional opponents and the confirmed upholders .... My ideas on astral influence havechanged continually, swinging back and forth like a pendulum Though I am so full of mysubject, so determined to defend it, so proud of my discoveries, I am still tormented by twoasserting demons. The first is the fear of having been mistaken in asserting that astral influence isreal; the second is the agonizing thought of all that I have been unable to discover or explain."99

95. Gérard Simon, in his study of the influence of astrology on the work of the greatastronomer Kepler, is concerned, among other things, to reveal the categories of thought whichwere available to Kepler. He says: "We start from the idea that before we study the way which aman in a particular epoch conceptually elaborates the facts available for him to reflect on, it's agood idea to ask ourselves at the outset about the norms he obeys when he conceptualizes ingeneral; and therefore an analysis of what was thinkable for him ought to precede an analysis of

97 See, for example, Michel Gauquelin Dreams and Illusions of Astrology, 1979, and Birth -Times, 1983, bothtranslated from French; the latter is called The Truth about Astrology in the British edition.98 Percy Seymour, Astrology, the Evidence of Science, 1988, p. 140, 149.99 Michael Gauqelin, Birth-Times, 1983, p. 180-181.

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what was thought by him."100 We can ask how much of what was thinkable and sensible for ourpredecessors, but has become unthinkable or nonsensical for us, is well forgotten, and how muchshould be preserved or revived, or at least commemorated.

96. Astrology thus has narrow and broad meanings. In a narrow sense, it has to do withpredicting character, fate and events on the basis of zodiacal signs and houses, planetary aspects andthe like. In a broad sense, it is study and knowledge of any influences of celestial objects on humanaffairs, on the basis of which predictions can be made. This might include gravitational influencesof the moon on the earth, on the basis of which we can predict (for example) tides, whichinfluence human affairs in certain ways. Perhaps this is too broad a definition of astrology. Butwhere do we draw the line? Planets and stars certainly have some detectable effects on us.Otherwise we couldn't see them. Furthermore, quite aside from physical interactions, the orderlymovement of celestial objects has served, at times, as a paradigm for priests, statesmen,philosophers, poets and a multitude of others. Who really knows—for sure— what the limits ofsuch effects are?

97. Some have maintained that the non-astronomical content of astrology belongs topsychology. Such a position allied was taken by the psychologist (or psychoanalyst) Carl Jung,who made proposals along this line to explain the prevalence and what he considered to beoccasional successes of horoscopic astrology.101 If today's physical cosmologists are right inholding that people have ultimately evolved from stars, our brains and minds may respond tothem, at conception or birth, or later on, in ways we have not yet discovered. A more exactastrology may yet be found, based not on horoscopes but on some other quantitativecorrespondences of celestial with human activity. Or maybe not.

98. Jacques Halbronn has advanced the idea that astronomers are not, by virtue of theirprofession, entitled to pronounce on the validity or invalidity of astrology. "If man is related tothe stars," he says, "this is not the fault of the stars, it is the fault of man .... It is aneurophysiological problem more than a cosmobiological or astrophysical problem. It is not aquestion of asking if the stars emit but if men receive " It is one thing, Halbronn says, ifthe relation between men and the stars posited by astrologers is a regrettable aberration, and anotherif it has turned out not to be real. In some ancient religions, bulls were worshipped. Do we have toask a zoologist or agriculturalist if such a practice has any rationale, or if it is part of the nature ofbulls to be worshipped? Do we have to ask an astronomer if there is any rationale in star worship,or if it is in the nature of a planet called Jupiter to play the role it has played in astrology? Is it inthe nature of tobacco, Halbronn asks, to be a habit for millions of human beings?102

99. While this may be true for astrology and astronomy as these terms are now general lyunderstood, the fact remains that the two disciplines were in most people's minds linked together formuch of their history, for several thousand years or more, until they began to separate about

100 Gérard Simon, Kepler astronome astrologue, 1979, p. 11.

101 See, e.g., the article on "synchronicity" in Naturerklärung und Psyche by Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli1952, English translation by Priscilla Silz, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955.102 Jacques Halbronn and Serge Hutin, Histoire de l'Astrologie, 1986, p. 145.

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three or four hundred years ago. This interrelationship has left traces on both the astronomy andastrology of today. Astrologers, for example, often take into account new discoveries ofastronomers, such as the new planets discovered since antiquity, including the asteroids. Someastrologers, more conservative, maintain that for astrological purposes one can consider the sunand moon as planets, along with the five other planets known to the ancients, and that the newplanets are irrelevant. Such astrologers only use old astronomy.

100. Astronomers, on the other hand, often feel it their duty to try to prove there isnothing worthwhile in astrology. To that extent at least astronomers are still concerned withastrology. More generally, while astronomers may become enthusiastic about the wonders ofheaven and earth as explained by their theories and tested by their observations, they are usuallyconstrained in their professional work to express this wonder in non-religious as well as non-astrological ways. Individual astronomers may write articles and books connecting ordisconnecting their professional beliefs from religious beliefs. But this is not considered as part oftheir astronomy. It is something added on, dispensable as far as the practice of their profession isconcerned.

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Chapter 2. From Astral Beliefs to Kepler, Fludd and Newton

1. In the Chinese Commentary on the Chuang Tzu by Kuo Hsiang (4th century A.D.) wefind: "The principles of things are from the very start correct. None can escape from them.Therefore a person is never born by mistake, and what he is born with is never an error. Althoughheaven and earth are vast and the myriad things are many, the fact that I happen to be here is notsomething that spiritual beings of heaven and earth, sages and worthies of the land, and people ofsupreme strength or perfect knowledge can violate Therefore if we realize that our nature anddestiny are what they should be, we will have no anxiety and will be at ease with ourselves in theface of life or death, prominence or obscurity, or an infinite amount of changes and variations,and will be in accord with principle.”103

2. In a charming although perhaps not authoritative book, Peter Lum says: "The Chinesebelieved that the world of stars was exactly similar to that of men. It was perforce a happier land,without flood or famine, but it was subject to the same laws as China, and its immortal inhabitantswere very similar to the Chinese. The familiar world known to mankind, with its obviousimperfections, was rather like a reflection in troubled waters of that ideal world which existedabove. And the Chinese believed that as long as life on earth followed the pattern of the star worldin every detail, there would be peace and happiness. It was only when, owing either to insufficientknowledge or else to lack of skill in carrying out their instructions, the earth got out of step withthe sky world that discontent and war and suffering followed. If there was a famine, or rebellion,or civil war, it must be because the astronomers were held responsible. It was a theory whichcertainly led to a rapid development of astronomical knowledge, especially when the unfortunateastronomers discovered that if they made a mistake, or even failed to predict an eclipse, theymight lose not only their jobs but their heads as well."104

3. Another version is given by Evan Hadingham, based on the annals of the Formal HanDynasty (202 B.C.E. -8 C.E.). The Chinese Emperor's rule was sanctioned, Hadingham says, by ablending of earthly and cosmic forces. The King was said to have Heaven for father and Earth formother. The main task of the state astronomers was to detect imbalances in this relationship bywatching for portents such as eclipses, meteors, comets and other unusual celestial phenomena.This responsibility placed them in a position of immense power in the Han bureaucracy. Anexamination of the annals shows that the scribes edited them, making additions, deletions, andalterations. Certain omens, such as eclipses, were reported on dates which were astronomicallyimpossible, which suggests that the importance of obtaining a sign overrode the Han astronomers'concern for facts.105

4. Some native Americans simply attributed errors of their astronomers to incompetence.Ray Williamson speaks about the sun- watchers, or sun priests, functionaries of the PuebloIndians, the Hopi and Zuni, who maintained a kind of solar horizon calendar by monitoringpositions of the sun from day to day, and correlated them with various ceremonies, e.g., at thesolstices. He reports a journal entry for April 18, 1921, made by Crow Wing, a Hopi Indian:

1 0 3A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 1963, translated and compiled by Wing-Tsit Chan, p. 332.1 0 4 Peter Lum,The Stars in our Heaven, Myths and Fables, 1948, p. 16-17.105Evan Hadingham, Early Man and the Cosmos (1984), p. 247; Hadingham cites W. Eberhard, "The PoliticalFunction of Astronomy and Astronomers in Han China" in Chinese Thought and Institutions, 1957, p. 38.

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"We think the Sun-Watcher is not a very good man. He missed some places, he was wrong lastyear. All the people think that is why we had so much cold this winter and no snow."106

5. We see why star-watchers, who were often also weather -watchers, were in demand. Wehave a flourishing weather prediction industry today, also not as reliable as we might like, but nodoubt better than once upon a time. One can find reports in newspapers of summer and wintersolstices and equinoxes, eclipses, comets, meteor showers, and so on. Supernovae are reported,and are especially valued by our cosmologist/astronomers, who make use of them when they makepredictions about the future and past of the whole universe. Just as people have done forthousands of years, we teach our young how to read and use calendars, what solstices andequinoxes are, at least in terms of change of seasons, and how such things are related to predictingfuture changes in daily sunlight and weather. We may teach them current theories of how eclipseswork, and what meteors and comets are thought to be. We also find in our newspapers predictionsabout the affairs of individuals, in daily horo scopes written (one supposes) by astrologers. Andwe hear of officials who consult astrologers about propitious times for taking actions, although itis rather rare to find officials who admit this publicly.

6. Edward Schafer says of the role of astronomy and astrology in China during the T'angdynasty (618-907 A.D.) that astronomical and calendrical affairs were a monopoly of the court.This was because astronomical activities had a ritualistic and religious component which involvedthe sovereign, the Son of Heaven, who was the link between celestial energy flowing from aboveand terrestrial responsibility flowing from below. Only the Son of Heaven could possess trueknowledge of the stars. Prying into such affairs could be treasonable. To understand the workingsand readings of the armillary sphere and star chart was to approach dangerously close to statesecrets. Thus ordinary citizens of the T'ang empire were forbidden to dabble in such matters.Officials maintained that this taboo was intended prevent inexpert interpreters and charlatans frommisleading and defrauding the ignorant masses. There were stringent penalties for the possessionand use of most implements and books which could be used to obtain exact astrological of what theT'ang code called "our occult counterparts in the sky".107

7. "The 'star gods' of ancient China were not mere ensouled stars," says Schafer, "except,perhaps, to the vulgar. They were inconceivable beings whose masks and costumes were alwayshanging in the Vestry or Green Room of the sky, ready for occasional use when the formlesspowers who owned them chose to show themselves more closely to advanced students of theHighest Clarity than they ever did to mortals whose vision was more clouded by the obsessivefogs of ordinary careers and mundane preoccupationsThe beginnings of official Chinese worshipand propitiation of these remote and sublime intelligences are lost in the roots of Chinese history.In Han times [25-220 A.D.], however, when we begin to have some clear idea of official cultpractices and beliefs, star-worship was already firmly established. A prominent place was given toit in the state rituals connected with the worship of heaven carried out in the capital city. Anexample, under the date of A.D. 26, was the great imperial sacrifice to Heaven, with offerings ofoxen to the sky-gods, inaugurated in the southern suburb of Lo-yang. The rite was conducted on acentral round "altar" (i.e., ceremonial platform) and external altars to the five paramount gods ofthe directions. The place of sacrifice was furnished with representations of

106 Ray Williamson, Living the Sky, The Cosmos of the American Indian, 1984, chapter on sun-watchers and p.111.107 Edward Schafer, Pacing the Void, T'ang Approaches to the Stars, 1977, p. 11-12.

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the purple palace of the pole and with blazons representing the positions of the sun in the east,the moon in the west, and of the Northern Dipper. There were also lesser altars for the planets.These celestial deities were always paramount in the state cult, since they had a specialrelationship with the imperial house, the earthly nexus of the power that radiated from them."108

8. Schafer goes on to say that state ceremonies conducted by the Son of Heaven himself,or by his surrogates, were momentous and complex affairs in which numerous potent spirits wereinvoked. At the winter solstice, in the most honorable position on a great round platform -- thenorthern one, facing south --the imperial court worshipped the ritual presence of the "SupremeTheocrat of the Heaven of Primal Light". This epithet refers to "the white radiance of the eternalbreath which pervades the cosmos". Schafer emphasizes that we should not regard Taoist starworship merely as worship of the stars. If we do so, we misunderstand their faith as much as if weregarded the adoration of St. Michael and St. Gabriel as bird worship because these creatures ofpure spirit are often represented with wings. To the Taoists, the stars were not gods but tokens andguises of cosmic beings, who might assume other guises and reveal themselves in other symbols."They were deities whose location was nowhere, who existed simultaneously in the brain and inouter space, and could exhibit their numinous presence in any manner or place that seemeddesirable." Taoist priests and initiates wore special costumes which symbolized their spiritualadvancement and embodied mana which was revealed outwardly by magical diagrams andtalismans. Their divinites were often described as wearing costumes just like those of their earthlyhierophants. Most prominent of these vestments was the "star hat", referred to very often in T'angpoetry. A westerner might imagine this as the conical hat of an Arabian Nights' sorcerer, or white-bearded Merlin, or a fairy godmother, or a wicked witch. However, it appears that no graphicrepresentation of a Taoist star-hat has survived from T'ang times.109

9. According to the Book of T'ang astrology was unnecessary in the golden ages ofChina's remotest past: "In the Grand Tranquillity of antiquity, the sun was not eroded and thestars did not explode." Is this a reference to sun spots, comets and meteors? to supernovae? Inany case, after the rule of godlike supermen in the earliest times came to an end, Schafer says,"the skies over the Middle Kingdom were soon flashing with warnings from the All Highest."Interpretation was needed. The earliest Chinese astrology, like the earliest Mesopotamianastrology, was an omen or portent astrology, whose function was to predict on behalf of themonarch and nation. The fate of individuals was only of interest as far as it bore on the fate ofthe empire. Astrologers were officers of the kingdom, "devoted to the interpretation of strangelights and movements in the heavens, and the timely anticipation of disasters".

10. Apparently not long before the beginning of the Han dynasty, the body of loreassociated with such startling phenomena acquired a theoretical framework, chiefly the cosmicdualism of yin and yang, along with the doctrine of the Five Activities, which could be made tocorrespond with the five visible planets. Along with these, there was a fundamental "theory ofcorrespondences". Schafer says: "Celestial events are the "counterparts" or "simulacra" ofterrestrial events, sky things have doppelgangers below, with which they are closely attuned

The germinal essences of the Myriad Creatures in every case have counterparts up inthe sky." They form shapes or contours under the sky. "Correspondence" has been defined as therelation

108 Schafer , ibid . , p . 222- 225.

109 Schafer , ibid .

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between the cosmic and political realms, and between the natural and human worlds, betweenmacrocosm and microcosm. The emperor, the Son of Heaven, is a critical nexus between them all,"dedicated to maintaining the exactness of the correspondences by means of ritual observances".As a consequence, the early Chinese philosophers pondered relationships rather than substance, amatter which preoccupied the Eleatics. However, Schafer observes, there were always skeptics.110

11. Among the earliest of the Chinese philosophical skeptics was Wang Chhung [sic, 2h’s; 27-97 A.D.], said by Joseph Needham and Wang Ling to have been "one of the greatest men ofhis nation in any age ..." They say: "[He] made a frontal attack upon the Chinese State 'religion'by an uncompromising resistance to anthropocentrism of any kind. Again and again he returns tothe charge that man lives on the earth's surface like lice in the folds of a garment. At the sametime, he admits that among the 300 (or 360) naked creatures, man is the noblest and mostintelligent. But if fleas, he said, desirous of learning man's opinions, emitted sounds close to hisear, he would not even hear them; how absurd then it is to imagine that Heaven and Earth couldunderstand the words of Man or acquaint themselves with his wishes. This position once gained,the whole weight of Wang Chhung's attack on superstition was deployed. Heaven, beingincorporeal, and Earth inert, can on no account be said to speak or act; they cannot be affected byanything man does; they do not listen to prayers; they do not reply to questions."111

1 2 . Still, paradoxically, Wang Chhung favored individual or horoscopic astrology, andmay even have introduced it into China. He believed "that among the most important of allinfluences acting upon men during the formative period of their lives were those of the stars

The paradox lies in the probability that it was precisely Wang Chhung's scientificnaturalism which pushed him into this theory. as a means of escaping from the arbitraryendowments of local gods and spirits and other 'supernatural' agencies. The stars were at leastregular in their motions." 1 1 2

13. Astral religion may be an important ingredient in a religion as a whole. CharlesDupuis (1742-1809) went so far as to claim that all religions have grown out of astral religions.Dupuis was a scholar who became a member of the revolutionary government in France in 1792,and also served briefly in Napoleon's government. However, he soon retired from politics, anddevoted the rest of his life to his studies. In 1795 he published an extensive work called Originede tous les cultes, ou la religion universelle in which he propounded his theory of the astral originof all religions, and futhermore that the place where all organized religion originated was northernEgypt. The work stirred up considerable controversy, and is said to have led to the expeditionorganized by Napoleon for the exploration of Egypt, an invasion which had enormous political andarcheological consequences.

14. Few believe at present that all religion originated in Upper Egypt, or that all religiongrew out of worship of celestial objects. However, that astrolatry had a considerable influence onthe development of many religions is undeniable, as shown by Dupuis's own impressive

110 Schafer, ibid., p. 55-57.

111 Joseph Needham and Wang Ling, Science and Civ il i sat ion in China, v. 2, "History of ScientificThought, 1969, p. 368, 374-375112 Needham and Ling, ibid, p. 384.

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scholarship which covers a multitude of times and places and peoples. He begins by asserting thatin the beginning all religion was pantheistic. Of the early idea of God, he says: "When man beganto reason upon the causes of his existence and preservation, also upon those of the multipliedeffects, which are born and die around him, where else but in this vast and admirable Whole couldhe have placed at first that sovereignly powerful cause, which brings forth everything, and in thebosom of which all reenters, in order to issue again by a succession of new generations and underdifferent forms. This power being that of the World itself, it was therefore the World, which wasconsidered as God, or as the supreme and universal cause of all the effects produced by it, of whichmankind forms a part. This is that great God, the first or rather the only God, who has manifestedhimself to man through the veil of the matter which he animates and which forms the immensityof the Deity."

15. Dupuis goes on: "Although this God was everywhere and was all, which bears acharacter of grandeur and perpetuity in this eternal World, yet did man prefer to look for him inthose elevated regions, where that mighty and radiant luminary seems to travel through space,overflowing the Universe with the waves of its light, and through which the most beautiful aswell as the most beneficent action of the Deity is enacted on Earth. It would seem as if theAlmighty had established his throne above that splendid azure vault, sown with brilliant lights,that from the summit of the heavens he held the reins of the World, that he directed themovements of its vast body, and contemplated himself in forms as varied as they are admirable,wherein he modifies himself incessantly." Dupuis quotes Pliny the Elder (Natural History, II.1):"The World, says Pliny, or what we otherwise call Heaven, which comprises in its immensity thewhole creation, is an eternal, an infinite God, which has never been created, and which shallnever come to an end. To look for something else beyond it, is useless labor for man, and out ofhis reach. Behold that truly sacred Being, eternal and immense, which includes within itselfeverything; it is All in All, or rather itself is All. It is the work of Nature, and itself is Nature.”113

16. Later, Dupuis says: "It would be a mistaken idea to believe, that [the Ancients]considered the World merely as a machine, without life and intelligence, moved by a blind andnecessary force As the World seemed animated by a principle of life, which circulates inall its parts, holding it in eternal activity, it was believed that the Universe lived as man did and theother animals, or rather that these lived only because the Universe, being essentially animated,communicated them for a few instants an infinitesimal portion of its immortal life, which itinfused into the coarse and inert matter of sublunary bodies. Was it restored back to itself? Manand beast died and the Universe alone, always alive, circulated around the remains of their bodiesby its perpetual motion, and organized new beings, The active Fire or the subtle substance, whichanimated it, by incorporating itself in its immense mass, was the universal soul

1 1 3 Charles Dupuis, The Orig in o f a l l Rel ig ious Worsh ip , 1871, p. 15-16, anonymous translation of material fromDupuis' work. It is difficult to trace the exact provenance of the material. Dupuis's work of 1795 was revised by P. R.Auguis and published in 1822, 10th edition, 1835-1836. An abridgement by Count M. de Tracy was published in1804. While the content, roughly speaking, of the anonymous translation into English can be found in the edition of1835-1 836, the semantically equivalent passages are quite different linguistically.

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of it. This is the doctrine, which is embodied in the system of the Chinese, on Yang and Yin, one ofwhich is the celestial matter, moveable and luminous, and the other the terrestrial one, inert andgloomy, of which all bodies are composed."

17. "This is the dogma of Pythagoras," Dupuis continues, "contained in those beautifulverses in the sixth book of the Aeneid [of Virgil], where Anchises reveals to his son [Aeneas] theorigin of the souls and their fate after death. 'You must know, my son, he said, that Heaven andEarth, the Sea, the luminous globe of the Moon and all the Stars, are moved by a principle ofeternal life, which perpetuates their existence; that there is a great intelligent Spirit extended in allthe parts of the vast body of the Universe, which, while mixing itself in All, is agitating it by aneternal motion. It is this soul, which is the source of life of man, of the beasts, of the birds and allthe monsters living within the bosom of the Ocean. The vital force, which animates them,emanates from that eternal Fire, which shines in the Heavens, and which while it is held captive inthe raw material of the bodies, is only developed as much, as the various mortal organizationspermit it, which subdue its power and activity. At the death of each creature, these germs of aparticular life, these portions of an universal breath, return to their principle and to their source oflife, which circulates in the starred sphere.'"

18. Matching lives of men with lives of stars is nearly universal. In Africa, according toHarold Courlander, the following cosmogony is told among the Yoruba people of Nigeria. "Inancient days, at the beginning of time, there was no solid land here where people now dwell.There was only outer space and the sky, and, far below, an endless stretch of water and wildmarshes. Supreme in the domain of the sky was the orisha, or god, called Olorun, also known asOlodumare and designated by many praise names. Also living in that place were numerous otherorishas, each having attributes of his own, but none of whom had knowledge or powers equal tothose of Olorun. Among them was Orunmila, also called Ifa, the eldest son of Olorun. To thisorisha Olorun had given the power to read the future, to understand the secret of existence and todivine the processes of fate. There was the orisha Obatala, King of the White Cloth, whom Oloruntrusted as though he also were a son. There was the orisha Eshu, whose character was neithergood nor bad. He was compounded out of the elements of chance and accident, and his nature wasunpredictability. He understood the principles of speech and language, and because of this gift hewas Olorun's linguist "

19. "Down below, it was the female deity Olokun who ruled over the vast expanses ofwater and wild marshes, a grey region with no living things in it " The two worlds wereseparate, and the orishas of the sky took no notice of what went on below, except for Obatala,King of the White Cloth. In order to overcome the monotony of what lay below, he went toOrunmila to ask how land could be introduced below. By casting palm nuts in his divining tray,Orunmila determined that Obatala should make a golden chain with which to descend to thewater with sand, to make land with. This Obatala did. He planted a palm nut, and there wasvegetation in the land, but no people, so Obatala decided to make people out of clay. Aftermaking a number, he got thirsty and began to drink palm wine. He drank so much that he gotdrunk, and some of the people he made after that were misshapen. A city called Ife was founded.Olokun, the orisha of the sea, angry that water had been covered with land, flooded it, and manypeople were drowned. After a while, Orunmila, the deity of divination, whose name means "TheSky Knows Who Will Prosper", came down from the sky and turned back the sea.

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He also taught certain orishas who had come to live below on the land, and certain men, the arts ofcontrolling unseen forces, and others the art of divining the future, "which is to say theknowledge of how to ascertain the wishes and intentions of the Sky God ....... Earthly order -- theunderstanding of relationships between people and the physical world, and between people andthe orishas was beginning to take shape."114

20. Peter Lum relates that in the myths of Britain, the constellation of the Great Bear(Ursa Major, the Big Dipper) is interwoven with the story of King Arthur and the Round Table.His name was alleged to have come from the words "Arth" and "Uthyr", meaning "bear" and"wonderful". Some of his followers are said to have claimed that he was an incarnation of thespirit of the Great Bear. The Round Table may have referred to the circle made by the swinging ofthe Great Bear's tail each night when it swept the northern sky. "Fiona Macleod tells an oldstory," Lum says, "of how Arthur once fell asleep on the seashore, long before he had anythought of being king, and in his sleep a spirit came to him and guided him far up to the northwhere the stars of the Great Bear were bright. There he found the knights of heaven seated at agreat circular table, resplendent as the shining stars, and they spoke to him and gave him wisecounsel. They told him that his name should be Arthur, that he would be king, and that he mustpattern his life and the rule of his kingdom on that of the kingdom of heaven."115

21. Gene Weltfish tells how some Native Americans who lived along the Missouri Riversaw the connection of the heavens with the affairs of men: "The Pawnees had many tasks toaccomplish in the early spring before the time of planting. Some of them were practical and someceremonial, but to the Pawnees who believed that nothing on earth could move without theheavens, no practical task could be undertaken unless the appropriate ceremony had preceded it

The round of spring renewal ceremonies was heralded by the appearance of two smalltwinkling stars known as the Swimming Ducks in the northeastern horizon near the Milky Way.They notified the animals that they must awaken from their winter sleep, break through the ice,and come out into the world again."116 And Ray Williamson relates that according to Pawneestories, they received from of their ritual direction from the stars. They claimed that at one timethey organized their villages according to patterns of the stars, and each village possessed asacred bundle given to it by one of the stars. When the different villages assembled for acommunal ceremony, they arranged themselves in a way which reflected the celestial positions ofthe stars whose bundles they possessed. There were 18 Skidi Pawnee villages, each associatedwith a different star."117

22. The Oglala Dakota, a branch of the Sioux Indians, were among those who defeatedCuster at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. (Cf. Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star,1984) Their chief god, great spirit, creator and chief executive was (is?) Wakan Tanka, who issixteen individuals in one, each of the four categories containing four individuals. As greatspirit, he is sky. Paul Radin says of this religion: "The sky is an immaterial god whose

1 1 4A Treasury of African Folklore, edited by Harold Courlander, 1975, p. 189-193; this story is from his ownYoruba Gods and Heroes, 1973.115 Lum, ibid., p. 38-39.116 Gene Weltfish, The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture, 1965, p. 79.117 Ray Williamson, Living the Sky, 1984, p. 229.

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substance is never visible. His titles given by the people are taku skan-skan and nagi tanka orthe great spirit, and those given by the priests are skan and to, blue. The concept expressed by theterm taka-skan-skan is that which gives motion to anything that moves. That expressed by theshamans by the word skan is a vague concept of force or energy and by the word to is theimmaterial blue of the sky, which symbolizes the presence of the great spirit. His domain is allabove the world, beginning at the ground. He is the source of all power and motion and is thepatron of directions and trails and of encampment. He imparts to each of mankind at birth aspirit, a ghost, and a sicun [an invisible god] and at the death of each of mankind he hears thetestimony of the ghost and adjudges the spirit. His word is unalterable except by himself. Healone can undo that which is done. His people are the stars and the feminine is his daughter."118

23. Plato speaks in many places of the workings of the stars. For example, there is themyth of Er in the 10th book of Plato's meditation on the nature ofjustice, the Republic. Er, the sonof Armenius, is killed in battle, but comes to life again just before he is to be burnt on a funeralpyre. He describes what he has seen in the other world. This includes a vision of the structure ofthe universe, described like this by Francis Cornford in his translation of the Republic: "What thesouls actually see in their vision is not the universe itself, but a model, a primitive orrery in aform roughly resembling a spindle, with its shaft round which at the lower end is fastened a solidhemispherical whorl. In the orrery the shaft represents the axis of the universe and the whorlconsists of 8 hollow concentric hemispheres, fitted into one another 'like a nest of bowls,' andcapable of moving separately. It is as if the upper halves of 8 concentric spheres had been cutaway so that the internal 'works' might be seen. The rims of the bowls appear as forming acontinuous flat surface; they represent the equator of the sphere of fixed stars and, inside that, theorbits of the 7 planets. The souls see the Spindle resting on the knees of Necessity. The wholemechanism is turned by the Fates, Clotho (the Spinner), Lachesis (She who allots), and Atropos(the Inflexible). Sirens sing eight notes on consonant intervals forming the structure of a scale(harmonia) which represents the Pythagorean 'music of the spheres.'"119

24. "All this imagery," Cornford concludes, "is, of course, mythical and symbolic. Theunderlying doctrine is that in human life there is an element of necessity or chance, but also anelement of free choice, which makes us, and not Heaven, responsible for the good and evil in ourlives." In the myth, after the souls have completed their journey to the Spindle resting on theknees of Necessity (probably the Milky Way) Lachesis, daughter of Necessity, distributor ofhuman fates, says: "Souls of a day, here shall begin a new round of earthly life, to end in death.No guardian spirit will cast lots for you, but you shall choose your own destiny." (Cornford'stranslation, p. 355). The dead souls are shown a large number of sample lives to choose from. Theman who had drawn the first lot chose, in thoughtless greed, to be reborn as a tyrant. He did not seethe many evils this life contained, and that he was fated to devour his own children. Platoattributes his choice to innocence and ignorance: "He was once of those," Plato says, "who hadcome down from heaven, having spent his former life in a well -ordered commonwealth andbecome virtuous from habit without pursuing wisdom. It might indeed be said that not the leastpart of those who were caught in this way were of the company which had come from heaven,

1 1 8 Paul Radin, Primitive Man as Philosopher, English translation 1927, p. 329-332, quoting James Walker, "TheSun Dance of the Oglala Divison of the Dakota," Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of NaturalHistory, XVI, Part II, p. 72-92.119Republic, translated by Francis Cornford, 1941, p. 350.

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because they were not disciplined by suffering; whereas most of those who had come up out ofearth, having suffered themselves and seen others suffer, were not hasty in making their choice."(ibid., p. 357). Cornford draws attention to Plato's intention that such stories be taken as myth. Bythis means Plato synthesizes older speculative interpretations in the manner of Pythagoreans withnewer ideas of rational philosophy.

25. Plato's visions still exerted great cultural force near the close of the 16th century, justbefore the advent of new cosmologies based on the works of such people as Copernicus, Kepler,Galileo and Descartes, unified by Newton in his system of the world. At Florence, in 1589, anelaborate theatrical production known as the intermezzi was presented at the Medici court in honorof the marriage of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Here is the opening scene, as described by RoyStrong: "On May 2nd 1589 the front curtain on the Teatro Mediceo parted to reveal a Dorictemple and above it a cloud, surrounded by rays of light, which slowly descended to the ground.On this rode the Doric Harmony, singing of her descent to mortals The initial statement of theDoric Harmony was carried to fruition in the first intermezzo which took the form of arepresentation of the Harmony of the Spheres according to Plato's cosmology, and in particular asdescribed in the tenth book of Plato's Republic. The prospettiva [a view of the city of Pisa inperspective] was suddenly covered with star-spangled clouds. Eight Platonic sirens plus two moreof the ninth and tenth sphere sat on clouds telling how they had forsaken the heavens to sing thepraises of the bride. On a central cloud sat Necessity on a throne with a diamond spindle of thecosmos between her knees. She was attended by the three Parcae or Fates and they in turn wereflanked by clouds bearing the seven planets and Astraea, whose advent on earth signalled thereturn of the Golden Age Above were twelve heroes and heroines, each pair embodyingvirtues attributed to the onlooking couple [the Duke and his bride]. Both the sirens and the planetsjoined in a dialogue describing the joy of the cosmos at so auspicious an alliance and as theclouds arose from the lower part of the stage sunlight streamed in, while above night approached.A concluding madrigal expressed hopes of 'glorious heroes' as a result of the match. As the cloudvision faded the stage was filled with sunlight, revealing the prospettiva of the city of Pisa "120

26. The Renaissance court festival, says Roy Strong, "unlike its medieval forebearers,stemmed from a philosophy which believed that truth could be apprehended in images Ourguide to it is a vast tract of literature, books of emblems and imprese and mythological manuals.These compilations were an extension and elaboration, under the impact of FlorentineNeoplatonism, of the inherited tradition of hidden meanings Although these texts were known tothe middle ages, they were studied with renewed fervour during the renaissance, when scholarsexamined them to recover a lost history or secret wisdom, pre-dating the Christian revelation,that was passed down through Moses and the Egyptian priests by way of Hermes Trismegistus tothe Greeks The acceptance of a pagan theology that descended from Zoroaster through HermesTrismegistus to Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato enabled Renaissance man to assimilate the wholeheritage of classical mythology and history."121

120 Roy Strong, Arts and Festivals, Renaissance Festivals 1450-1 650, 1973 (1984); p. 137 and 23-24.

121 Strong, ibid.

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27. Goethe (1749-1832) wrote:

Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen,Die Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten, Bistalsobald und fort und fort gediehen Nach demGesetz, wonach du angetreten.

So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen,So sagten schon Sibyllen, so Propheten; Undkeine Zeit und keine Macht zerstückelt GeprägteForm, die lebend sich entwickelt ..............................Das Liebste wird vom Herzen weggescholten,Dem harten Muss bequemt sich Will und Grille.So sind wir scheinfrei denn, nach manchen JahrenNur enger dran, als wir am Anfang waren.

The way the sun stood at the planets' greeting,The way it stood the day the world endowed you,You were from that time on developedAccording to the law by which you entered.Thus must you be, and you can't escape,The sybils and the seers have said it;No time nor force can disassembleImprinted form that grows itself in living ................What's loved is kept away from hearts that want it,Will and whim are shaped to a Must unyielding. Weonly seem free, and after many years,We're more bound than when we started. 1 2 2

28. We have said that Stoics were devoted to astrology in the Hellenistic era. Therewere others in that era who embraced astrology. There were, for example, theHermeticists. The works called Hermetica, or the Corpus Hermeticum, are Greek andLatin writings of uncertain origin, evidently composed from about 200 to 500 A.D., whichcontain religious or philosophic teachings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, the "thrice-greatest" Hermes, perhaps a mythical person or god. Some say this Hermes is not the GreekHermes, but the Egyptian god Thoth, perhaps identified with Hermes by AlexandrianGreeks. However this is uncertain. William Grese says that "the predominant view is thatthe Hermetica are a Hellenistic development of Greek (especially Platonic and Stoic)philosophy, and the leading exponent of this position has been André-Jean Festugière."12 3

However, as Grese observes, in addition to the religious and philosophic elements in theHermetica, there are also magical and astrological elements. These writings are to this dayan important part of the so-called occult tradition.

1 2 2 From "Urworte, Orphisch",German text taken from German Poetry from 1750 -1900, 1984, edited by RobertBrowning, p. 66, 68, my translation.

1 2 3 (William Grese, "Magic in Hellenistic Hermeticism, in Hermeticism and the Renaissance, Intellectual History andthe Occult in Early Modern Europe, edited by Ingred Merkel and Allen Debus, 1988, p. 45.)

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29. A definition of occult, in this sense, is given by Edward A. Tiryakian: "I understandintentional practices, techniques, or procedures which: a) draw upon hidden or concealed forces innature or the cosmos that cannot be measured or recognized by the instruments of modernscience, and b) which have as their desired or intended consequences empirical results, such aseither obtaining knowledge of the empirical course of events or altering them from what theywould have been without this intervention ......To go on further, in so far as the subject of occultactivity is not just any actor, but one who has acquired specialized knowledge and skillsnevessary for the practices in question, and insofar as these skills are learned and transmitted insocially (but not publicly available) organized, routinized, and ritualized fashion, we can speakof these practices as occult sciences or occult arts."124 The word esoteric is also used in thisconnection, and Tiryakian says "esoteric" systems are the "religio -philosophic belief systemswhich underlie occult techniques and practices; that is, it [the word "esoteric"] refers to the morecomprehensive cognitive mappings of nature and the cosmos, the epistemological and ontologicalreflections of ultimate reality, which mappings constitute a stock of knowledge that provides theground for occult procedures."125

30. F. L. Peters observes that Hermeticism was an extremely complex phenomenon. Thetheoretical and speculative works of the Corpus Hermeticum were accompanied by an immensevariety of tracts on practical Hermeticism, which is to say, on the manipulation of naturalsubstances. Hermeticism had a considerable influence on Muslim culture. With the assistance, itseems, of Iranian astrologers, Hermes Trismegistus was incorporated into Islamic learning ageneration before Plato or Aristotle found a firm base there. Many Muslims believed in theinfluence of stars on individuals. One of the greatest of the early Muslim scientists was al-B iruni(11th century a.D.). Among his many works was an Instruction on the Elements of Astrology,which became a standard work on the subject. Peters says: "Once again, even in Biruni, one cansee the two faces of Islamic science; the secular tradition of trigonometric functions, astronomicaltables and schemes of world chronology was accompanied and contaminated by a paralleltradition of horo scopes, astral influences and elaborate theories of the descent of occult wisdomfrom the hoary past into the bosom of Islam ... Each discipline had authentic credentials thatestablished it as a science; and if astrology was somewhat less exact in its predictions, as Ptolemywillingly conceded, it was not more so than ethics, for example, with respect to geometry." 126

31. An Hermeticist, Joannes Stobaeus (c. 500 A.D.), says: "For the stars are theinstrument of destiny; in acccordance with this they bring to pass all things for nature and formen."127 A passage from the Latin Hermetic work known as the Asclepius reads:

"Asclepius: But tell me, Trismegistus, what part of the government of the universe isadministered by Destiny?."

1 2 4 Edward A.Tiryakian, "Toward the Sociology of Esoteric Culture", American Journal of Sociology 78, 1972, p.491-512; quoted by Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions, 1976, p. 48.1 2 5 Quoted by Eliade, l.c.126F. L. Peters, Allah 's Commonwealth, A History of Islam in the Near East 600-1100 A.D., 1973, p. 270, 274, 351. 1 2 7

Quoted in Hermetica, edited by Walter Scott, 1924, v. 1, p. 434.

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"Trismegistus: That which we name Destiny, Asclepius, is the force by which all events arebrought to pass; for all events are bound together in a never-broken chain by the bonds ofnecessity. Destiny then is either God himself, or else it is the force which ranks next after God; itis the power which, in conjunction with Necessity, orders all things in heaven and earth accordingto God's law. Thus Destiny and Necessity are inseparably linked together and cemented to eachother. Destiny generates the beginnings of things; Necessity compels the results to follow. And inthe train of Destiny and Necessity goes Order, that is, the interweaving of events, and theirarrangement in temporal succession. There is nothing that is not arranged in order; it is by orderabove all else that the Kosmos itself is borne upon its course; nay, the Kosmos consists wholly oforder. Of these three, the first is Destiny, which sows the seed, as it were, and thereby gives riseto all that is to issue from the seed thereafter; the second is Necessity, by which all results areinevitably compelled to follow; and the third is Order, which maintains the interconnexion of theevents which Destiny and Necessity determine. But Destiny, Necessity, and Order, all threetogether, are wrought by the decree of God, who governs the Kosmos by this law and by his holyordinance. Hence all will to do or not to do is by God's ruling wholly alien from them. They areneither disturbed by anger nor swayed by favour; they obey the compulsion of God's eternalordinance, which is inflexible, immutable, indissoluble. Yet chance or contingency also exists inthe Kosmos, being intermingled with all material

things......"1 2 8

32. In the Lord's Prayer of the Christian New Testament we have:

Our Father who art in heaven,Hallowed be thy name.Thy kingdom come,Thy will be done,On earth as it is in heaven. 1 2 9

33. The influence of Hermeticism in the European Renaissance, and on the origins ofmodern science has been much debated. There can be no doubt that its influence wasconsiderable in some ways. A translation and publication of the Corpus hermeticum wascompleted in 1471 by Marsilio Ficino, and this and subsequent translations and related workswere in considerable demand. An ancient pedigree was sought for Hermes Trismegistus. Thepedigree according to Ficino runs from Plato (who, Ficino claims, couldn't have thought up allhis wisdom by himself) to Philolaus, then to Pythagoras (said to have obtained his wisdom inEgypt), and so on, back to Hermes. What about Hermes' source? "Here," says Wayne Shumaker,"we pass out of the world altogether. Mercury 'puts aside the fogs of sense and of fancy, bringinghimself thus to an approach to mind; and presently Pimander, that is, the divine mind, flows intohim, whereupon he contemplates the order of all things.' The pedigree of the pimander [divineintelligence] terminates in God Himself, whose word must perforce be accepted."130 Whatemerges, says Shumaker, is una priscae theologiae ubique sibi consona secta, "a system ofaboriginal theology everywhere harmonious with itself". That is, a certain

128 Translated by Walter Scott in Hermetica, 1924, v. 1, p. 362-364.

129 Mark, 6.7-12,Revised Standard Version, 1952, revision of American Standard Version, 1881-1885, 1901, inturn a revision of King James Version, 1611.

130Wayne Shumaker, Occult Sciences in the Renaissance, A Study in Intellectual Patterns, 1972, p. 204.

group of Renaissance scholars and their followers sought in the Hermetic writings a patternwhich would allow the reconciliation of any pagan system with Christianity. It was a kind ofstructuralism. Shumaker remarks that a vestige of it is found in George Eliot's Middlemarch, inwhich Mr. Casaubon is attempting to work out a "Key to All the Mythologies". The aim ofRenaissance syncretists like Ficino (who was an enthusiastic astrologer) was not to contrastmythologies, nor to criticize them, but to unite them in a harmonious concordance.

34. In her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) and subsequent works,Frances Yates tried to show that Hermeticism was a major influence on the development ofmodern science. "The Renaissance magus," she says, "was the immediate ancestor of theseventeenth century scientist."131 Karin Johannisson summarizes this point of view. The Hermetictradition in the Renaissance, she says, started in the 15th century with the translation of Neoplatonicwritings by Marsilio Ficino and his circle in Florence, Italy. This included the CorpusHermeticum. "Here," says Johannisson, "the proud notion of a pristine knowledge was depicted, agift from God to Adam and an exhortation to Man to complete the work of creation by unlockingit and decoding its underlying structure ... Nature has its own language, and the means ofinterpreting it was a secret alphabet, derived from Greek number mysticism and the cabala,accessible only to the chosen." This Hermetic tradition was carried further by Paracelsus and hisfollowers, and such people as Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), John Dee (1527-1608) and RobertFludd (1574-1637). These traditions, according to Johannisson, were transformed into a concreteprogram in two renowned Rosicrucian manifestos, the Famafraternitas (1614) and theConfessiofraternitas (1615). Johannisson takes these to have made a positive contribution to thedevelopment of early modern science.

35. "They maintained," Johannisson says, "the idea that knowledge cannot be limited bygiven methods, and that against rationality, objectivity, and critical doubt as the cardinal virtues ofscience must be polace proud hope that the boundaries of science can always be transcended, thedream of a perfectible science in the service of mankind." Johannisson takes the story to the end ofthe 18th century, when during the years around the French Revolution, "the concepts of magicand science once again seem to merge in the intense mystical activity of the orders, and when thescientific academy and the secret society fulfill similar functions as platforms for scientificactivity and propaganda."132

36. Johannisson asserts that a 16th and 17th magus considered himself to be a naturalphilosopher in the same way, say, as Kepler, Galileo and Newton were natural philosophers. (Theterms "scientist" and "physicist" were not yet in common use.) "The magus," she says,"understands nature as an animate and active network of ultimately spiritual forces, the scientistssees it as a "machine," a manifestation of the universal laws of nature." Thus Johannisson regardslaws of nature as antithetical to spirituality, rather than as rules complementary to spirituality, orperhaps rules which even spirits must obey. "The magus believes that because

1 3 1 Frances Yates, "The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science", in Art, Science and History in the Renaissance,1968, edited by C. S. Singleton, p.258.132Karin Johannisson, "Magic, Science, and Institutionalization in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", in

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Hermeticism and the Renaissance, Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, 1988, based on a1982 meeting, edited by Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus, p. 251-261.

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1 3 3 Johannisson, ib id.

nature is animate -- not completed and finished -- he can enter into it, operate on it, andmanipulate it."

37. But a magus is himself a part of nature, and had no choice about entering it. And tosay that nature is not complete is not to say that it doesn't obey natural laws, be they only laws ofprobability. Johannisson says: "The scientist on the other hand would not attempt to exceednature; his task is to understand and to describe it, to come as close as possible to its unassailablemechanism; for him the laws of nature are inexorable and unbreakable, absolute criteria for what isnatural and supernatural. For the magus, the supernatural simply coincides with the unusual, themarvelous, the artificial; the laws of nature are not regarded as absolute and can be exceeded by art

Magic and science work with different methods. Whereas science is based on theconviction that experience and reason are valid instruments of knowledge, magic is based on theconviction that such values cannot be fixed, and the aim is continually set far beyond theboundaries of what is empirically and rationally verifiable. The theories of science are dictated bylogic, those of magic by analogy. In opposition to rationality and understanding (episteme) standirrational hope and use (techne). At its most general, then, magic can be characterized as theutilization of art in order to attain specific desired ends, not in order to attain knowledge andunderstanding Magic strove to transcend the laws of nature, science to decode them, but also toaccept subordination to them."133

38. But there isn't, and never has been, a clear demarcation between science asknowledge and understanding, and technology as use of science and other practical arts.Scientists, on the whole, must use and create or rely indirectly on technology in their pursuit ofunderstanding, and technicians must use and create scientific understanding in realizing theirgoals. There is, however, a clear demarcation between technology as use limited by naturallaws, and magic as use not limited by natural laws.

39. "To summarize," Johannisson says, "magic as a scientific activity builds on a definedconception of knowledge -- derived from the Hermetic tradition-- stressing experiments andrationality in a mathematical sense, together with a visionary utopianism aiming at practicalresults." The Hermetic tradition, however, shows few signs of appreciating what appliedmathematics is like, as understood by such people as Archimedes, Newton, and mathematicianstoday. On the contrary, Hermeticists are prone to engage in numerology, number mysticism andnumber magic, which are not applied mathematics in the same sense.

40. Number mysticism and numerology go back to ancient times. The Hellenistic era, theperiod of the Hermeticists, the Gnostics, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Academics, and earlyChristianity, was also the period of the Neoplatonists, who looked back not only to Plato but tothe Pythagoreans, some of whom have customarily been taken to have been among the greatmathematicians of ancient Greece, and some of whom (not necessarily the best mathematicians)were devoted to a kind of numerology. How much of classical Greek mathematics was due toPythagoras or his immediate followers, and how much to other pre-Socratic or later Greeks hasbeen for a long time a difficult and debated question.

41. Pythagoras himself appears to have been a kind of shaman, "the wisest of men", amiracle-worker who founded a secret society in which he taught metempsychosis (thereincarnation or migration of souls), the music or harmony of the heavens or spheres, immortalityof souls among the stars, and various magical rituals and practices. Walter Burkert holds that thegeneral belief in the Pythagorean origin of mathematics (mathematics, say, as Aristotle andEuclid understood it) stems from no earlier than the Neoplatonic and neo-Pythagorean scholastictraditions of late antiquity, many hundreds of years after the introduction of mathematical sciencein the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.E.

42. It is questionable, says Burkert, that Greek mathematics originated in the revelationof a guru, within a secret society founded to do mathematics, since it arose in close connectionwith the development of Greek naturalistic views of the world by Pythagoreans and non-Pythagoreans alike. Geometry was an important component of astronomy among the classicalGreeks, and some of the geometers were not Pythagoreans. Earlier than in other fields, geometryand astronomy became the domain of specialists because their increasing complexity requiredspecial talent, and the existence of such talent is independent of membership in any particularschool. The Sophists, who were not mathematically inclined, were detached from the naturalphilosophers, and the exactness of the mathematical parts of natural philosophy contrasted moreand more with the uncertainty of other kinds of philosophy. By Plato's time, mathematics wasalready the model science. Individual Pythagoreans had some part in this development, but themathematics of the classical Greeks was Greek, not merely Pythagorean.134

43. Some early Pythagoreans, perhaps including Pythagoras himself, were devoted tonumerology, which Burkert takes to be of pre-historic origin. Indeed, number dominates thePythagoreans' general view of the world. But devotion to number in the form of numbermysticism and number symbolism is quite different from devotion to mathematics as a science.Burkert gives this as another reason that Greek mathematics in the manner of Euclid orArchimedes didn't arise from the Pythagoreans. He says: "It has long been known that consciousand unconscious, rational and irrational impulses, logic and mysticism, interpenetrate in acomplicated and nearly inextricable fashion. As Kepler discovered his second planetary law in'Pythagorean' manipulation of regular polyhedra, so one might find it obvious that precisely thepre-philosophical lore of Pythagoras provided the stimulus for Pythagorean science. But not onlydoes the cosmic significance of number [as in numerology] come from pre-logical numbersymbolism, but, even in that which Aristotle presents as the philosophy of the Pythagoreans, thereemerges again and again a spirit and method directly opposite to that of exact mathematics, so thatthe latter cannot have arisen from the activities of the Pythagoreans. It is not an unbroken unit ofscience and religious-ethical teaching that we find in the Pythagorean tradition, but a gropingattempt to mediate between two levels, to transpose an ancient interpretation of the world into thelanguage of the recently founded philosophia."135

44. It appears, then, that the contrast of numerology with mathematics related toexperience is found already among the pre-Socratic Greeks. In the early 17th century, in the

134Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, translation with authorized revisions by Edwin L.Minar, Jr., 1972, of Weisheit and Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaus und Platon, 1962, p. 406, 426-

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52 Scott , ibid . , 167 .

427.1 3 5 Burkert, ibid., p. 466, 479-480.

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work of people like Johannes Kepler and Robert Fludd, heirs of a neo-Pythagorean revival in theEuropean Renaissance of a neo-Pythagorean upsurge in Hellenistic times in North Africa, we finda mixture of the two, with mathematics and its relation to experience having mostly the upperhand in Kepler, and numerology and magic having mostly the upper hand in Fludd.136

45. Burkert concludes that the Pythagorean philosophy synthesized scientifically validmathematics with scientifically invalid numerology. He regards this synthesis as largely the thework of Philolaus, following some prodomal attempts by Hippasus. He says: "The tradition ofPythagoras as a philosopher and scientist is, from the historical point of view, a mistake. But thefascination that surrounded, and still surrounds, the name of Pythagoras does not come, basically,from specific scientific connotations, or from the rational method of mathematics, and certainlynot from the success of mathematical physics. More important is the feeling that there is a kind ofknowing which penetrates to the very core of the universe, which offers truth as something at oncebeatific and comforting, and presents the human being as cradled in a universal harmony. In thefigure of Pythagoras an element of pre-scientific cosmic unity lives on into an age in which theGreeks were beginning, with their newly acquired method of rational thought, to make themselvesmasters of their world, to call tradition into question, and to abandon long-cherished beliefs. Theprice of the new knowledge and frreedom was a loss in inner security; the paths of rational thoughtlead further and further in different directions, and into the Boundless. There the figure of theancient Sage, who seemed still to possess the secret of unity, seemed more and more refulgent.Thus after all, there lived on, in the image of Pythagoras, the great Wizard whom even anadvanced age, though it be unwilling to admit the fact, cannot entirely dismiss."137

46. Nicomachus and Iamblichus and other neo-Pythagoreans of the 2nd through 4thcenturies A.D. (part of the Hellenistic era, in the extended sense) associated numbers with ethicaland social entities, taking themselves to be following a tradition established long before by thePythagoreans themselves. To take one case, justice was associated with square numbers, perhapsbecause there are two "balanced" factors in a square (4 = 2·2, 9 = 3·3 etc.). One of Aristotle'scommentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias, reports that some took the number 4 to represent justice,or even to be justice, since it is the least square of a whole number (not counting 1). Others took 9to represent justice, perhaps because (as a guess) it is the square of the "balanced" number 3 whichhas a beginning, middle and end. The number 2 might be considered as balanced, but somePythagoreans took odd numbers to be "limited" and even numbers to be "unlimited", and perhaps3, as the least of the limited numbers, was considered more appropriate for justice. Or maybe thiswasn't the way it happened at all. W.K.C. Guthrie observes, thus complicating matters, that somelate commentators took 3, 5 or 8 for justice.138

47. To take another example, marriage is associated with 5, or is 5, because it is theunion of male, associated with odd numbers (in particular 3), and female, associated with evennumbers (in particular 2), and, of course, 3 + 2 = 5. Again, opportunity, or "fit and proper" timewas identified with 7 "because in nature the times of fulfilment with respect to birth and maturitygo in sevens." A man, for example, can be born after 7 months, cut teeth after another 7, reach

1 3 6 I will give details about the contrast and clash between Kepler and Fludd later.137Burkert, ibid., p. 480, 482.1 3 8 W.K.C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy , 1967, v. 1, p. 303-304.

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puberty after the second period of 7 years, grow a beard after the third period of 7 years, etc. Asinaccurate as this sounds, the reckoning of human lives in multiples of 7 is said by Guthrie tohave been a commonplace of Greek thought.

48. Aristotle severely criticized theories of this kind in his Metaphysics. Nevertheless,some of the followers of Pythagoras were some of those who initially developed the classicalGreek mathematics which culminated with the works of such mathematicians and astronomers asEudoxus, Euclid, Eratosthenes, Apollonius and Archimedes. Many of these works aretheoretically sound and of practical value to this day. Mathematics, especially, has the peculiarproperty, among sciences, that while there continue to be new developments in it, often the olddevelopments remain useful, or even essential. On the whole, good mathematics may be forgotten,ignored, re-invented, re-formed or reformed, extended, placed in more general contexts, placed onnew foundations, and so on -- but not shown to be mistaken.

49. Edward Strong argues against such authors as E. A. Burtt139 that the triumphs ofmathematical philosophy in the work of people like Galileo, Descartes and Newton did notdescend from the mathematical philosophy of the neo-Platonists and neo-Pythagoreans whichhad been elaborated by a number of Italian philosophers in the 15th and 16th centuries. "TheFlorentine Platonism of the fifteenth century and the Pythagorean-Platonic metamathematics of thesixteenth century are not historically eligible for the honor of having instructed men to turn fromclassification to measurement."140

50. The "classification" which Strong refers to is a kind of numerology, and themeasurement a kind of applied mathematics. In Platonic philosophy, numbers, as such, have anintermediate existence between what can be sensed and the eternal ideas of which they areinstances. Among the neo-Platonists, this led to a kind of theological mathematics, as Strongcalls it. This is found in such neo-Platonists as Nicomachus and Theon. "Neither one," Strongsays, "attempts to deduce mathematical or 'scientific' truths from the mystery of numbers; rather wesee them treating number as possessing properties which they insist is other than that of theirarithmetical work. Both recognize that arithmetic is a self-contained science, but they alsoconsider it as the way of initiation into realities which lie beyond the limited procedures of themathematicians."141

51. In theological arithmetic, properties of the soul, society, ethics, the elements, and soon, are identified with numbers by a succession of analogies. "Numbers provide a symbolism andmethod of classification -- a symbolism of unity and multiplicity in explaining creation, and aclassification of hierarchical relationships and essential virtues by means of triadity andtriangularity, and so forth. Number as a kind of 'universal and exemplary plan' in the mind ofGod has its fundamental meaning not so much in the notion of law as in the notion of efficacy orpower Efficacy and creation rather than law and quantitative relations, divinity rather thandemonstration, divine numbers as transcending the physical and mathematical rather than a

139 Edwin A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, 1925, revised edition, 1954.

140 Edward W. Strong, Procedures and Metaphysics, A Study in the Philosophy of Mathematical-PhysicalScience in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, 1936, p. 10.141 Strong, ibid., p. 28.

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vision of mathematical order 'saving' appearances: these contrasts emphasize the transformationwhich mathematics undergoes in its elevation to the status of divine arithmetic."142

5 2 . In ancient Hebrew, Greek and Arabic, numerals are letters of the alphabet, thoughperhaps specially marked in some way. It appears to have been this that gave rise to the view thathidden meanings and correspondences of written words can be found by adding together thenumerical values of their letters. Among the Jewish cabalists, this was known as gem atria,among the Greeks isopsephia, among the Muslims, hisab al-jumal.143 Various Christian writersalso use the technique. Such techniques are still practiced today, here and there. Idries Shah givesa number of examples in one of his works on the Sufi mysticism of the Muslims, which began tospread with the advent of Islam in the 7th century of the Christian calendar, and which still livestoday. Shah regards the Sufis to have means of contacting the underlying wisdom of humanity,and to "correspond to the inner reality of Islam, as with the equivalent aspect of every otherreligion and genuine tradition. " 1 4 4

53. Unfortunately, this wisdom seems to exist largely in cryptic or secret form, andillogicality is said by Shah to be a key feature of Sufism. In any case, in Arabic, most words canbe assigned roots consisting of 3 consonants. Many words will then have the same root.Furthermore, there is a standard way of associating letters of the Arabic alphabet with numbers(given on p. 174 of The Sufis). The Hisab el-Jamal (different transliteration of the hisab al-jumal ofIfrah) is said to be the "standard rearrangement of letters and numbers".145 With these things inmind, Shah says, in a comment on the significance of "dots" to Sufis: "Among the Sufis, NQT --"dot," "point," sometimes "abbreviation" -- has an important value in conveying teachings. In oneaspect this is connected with the mathematical part of Sufism. The Arabic word for "geometrician"or "architect" is muhandis. It is composed of the letters M, H, N, D, S, which are equivalent to thenumbers 40, 5, 50, 4, 60. These total 159. These numbers, resplit conventionally into tens,hundreds and units, yield 100 = Q, 50 = N, 9 = T. These three consonants, combined in the order2,1,3, provide the root NQT. This root means "dot," "point." In certain ceremonial usages,therefore, the word "point" is used to convey the concealed word which is its parent -- the wordmuhandis, the Prime Builder."146

54. Gershom Scholem describes a short Jewish work called the Sefer Yesirah or Book ofCreation which seems to date from the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. It circulated widely in manylands during the European Middle Ages, and is found today even outside of academies, especiallyamong occultists. Scholem considers that it probably originated from neo-Pythagorean sourcessuch as the writings of Nichomachus of Gerasa (c. 140 A.D.), together with the idea of "letters bymeans of which heaven and earth were created" which may have come from within Judaism. 55.The basic thesis of the work, accoording to Scholem, is that: "All reality is consituted in the threelevels of the cosmos -- the world, time, and the human body, which are the fundamental realm ofall being -- and comes into existence through the

142 Strong, ibid., p. 33.

143 Cf. George Ifrah, From One to Zero, A Universal History of Numbers. 1985, translation by LowellBair of Histoire Universelle de Chifres, 1981, Part IV, Ch. 16-21.144 Idries Shah, The Sufis, 1964, p. 28.145 Shah, ibid., p.110.146 Shah, ibid., p. 372.

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combination of the twenty-two consonants [of the Hebrew alphabet], and especially by way of the'231' gates, that is, the combinations of the letters into groups of two (the author apparently heldthe view that the root of Hebrew were based not on three but on two consonants)." The 22consonants are divided into 3 groups according to a peculiar phonetic system. The groups contain3, 7 and 12 letters. The group of three consists of "matrices" (sometimes translated "mothers"),corresponding to ether (or spirit), water and fire. From these everything else came into being, andcorrespond also to the 3 seasons of the year (3 rather than 4 was an ancient Greek partitioning), andthe 3 parts of the body: head, torso and stomach. The letters in the group of 7 correspondespecially to the 7 planets, 7 heavens, t days of the week and 7 orifices of the body. They alsorepresent 7 fundamental opposites: life and death, peace and disaster, wisdom and folly, wealthand poverty, charm (or beauty) and ugliness, sowing (or fruitfulness) and devastation, dominationand servitude. And they correspond to the six directions of heaven: above (or height), below (ordepth), east, west, north and south [presumably the 7th is earth, or an observer?] The 12remaining consonants correspond to the 12 principal activities of man, the 12 signs of the zodiac,the 12 months of the years, and the 12 chief limbs of the human body. Scholem observers that thescheme of the Sefer Yesirah betrays its relationship with astrology, although it is based onlanguage mysticism. From such ideas, says Scholem, "direct paths lead to the magical conceptionof the creative power of letters and words".147

55. There have been numerous other species of number magic and mysticism. Examplesare beliefs in special values of certain numbers, such as a belief that 7 must be especiallysignificant since in Genesis God is said to have created the universe in 7 days, and there are manyother places in the Bible where the number 7 appears. The connection with the Bible is stressed inan unusually elaborate and worked out treatment of the religious significance of small integers intwo volumes by the Christian writer Paul Lacuria.148 The number 7 is especially considered inChapters XV-XVIII. Sample: the 7 divine attributes Life, Liberty, Light, Holiness, Wisdom-Justice(linked) and Eternity correspond (in these orders) to the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue -indigo and violet, to the musical notes do, re, mi, fa, sol -la (linked), ti (v. 1, p. 196-197), and theintegers 1 through 7. Of course there are also 7 days in a week, according to the ancients 7"planets" (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), etc.

56. Henry Corbin describes the "science of the balance" (' ilm al-M ¯z£n) associated with

the Muslim writer J£bir ibn Hayy£n, as described by the Muslim Sh ¯-ite writer Haydar Amli (8thcentury A.D., 14th century A.H.), and said by him to have been originated by Pythagoras. HaydarAmµli explains that 1 is the cause of number, 2 is the number of the First Intelligence as secondexistence; 3 is the number of the universal Soul; 4 is the number of nature; 5 of "prime matter"; 6of space ("corporeal volume"); 7 of the celestial Sphere; 8 of the Elements; 9 of the 3 naturalkingdoms, mineral corresponding to 10's, vegetable corresponding to 100's, animal correspondingto 1000's. "Each number carries by itself an esoteric secret which is not found in any othernumber."

147 Gershom Scholem, p. 24-35 of Origins of the Kabbalah, 1987, translation of Ursprung undAnfänge derKabbala, 1962; there is an English translation of the Sefer Yesirah by Knut Stenring under the title The Book ofFormation or Sepher Yetzirah, 1923, and another in The Qabala Trilogy, unattributed, called the "The SepherYetsira", based on the French translation by Carlo Suarès, 1968.

148 Paul Lacuria, Les Harmonies de l'«tre, exprimªe par les nombres, 1899.

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57. There are "balances" of 7 and 12, "correspondences between the astronomy of thevisible [exterior] Heaven and the astronomy of the spiritual [interior] Heaven, between theesoteric hierarchy and its cosmic correspondences." The 7 divine attributes as given here are Life,Knowledge, Power, Will, Word, Hearing and Sight, to which correspond 7 names called the "Imamsof the divine Names". In the spiritual world, there are 7 prophets who are manifestations of the 7"ecstatic Angels of love": Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus and Mohammad. There are 7planets, 7 climates corresponding to them, 7 Earths and 7 peoples who inhabit them, and 7 degreesof hell. One has the 12 primordially created angels, the 12 Imams who are the 12 friends of God,and the 12 signs of the zodiac.

5 8 . There is also a "balance" of 19, which is of greatest importance, "for the system of theworld is ordered according to the number 19." This is because "the whole universe is in the imageof God." There are 7 planets and 12 signs of the zodiac: total 19. There are the Intelligence andSoul of the universe, 9 celestial spheres, 4 elements, 3 natural kingdoms, and Man: total 19. Thereare 7 great prophets and 12 Imams belonging to them: total 19. The 28 letters of the Arabicalphabet are reduced to 19 "degrees" of letters by a rather complicated process. And so on. Thereis a balance of 28, and other balances. Corbin ends his treatment of this numerological systemwith a description, derived from Ibn 'Arab ¯ of the "knights of the invisible", the Sages who, it issaid in the Koran, understand the true meaning of certain parables: "it is thanks to them that we canhave in this world a 'science of correspondences'." 1 4 9

59. Another familiar kind of numerology is a belief in magical properties of squarematrices of numbers, "magic squares", in which the entries are the integers from 1 to n2 for some n,and the sums are the same in rows, columns and main diagonals. For example, if the 4 rows 1-15-14-4, 12-6-7-9, 8-10-11-5, 13-3-2-16 are arranged into a square in this order, the sums are all 34.This particular example appears in a work called Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652) by AthanasiusKircher, a noted 17th century Jesuit "Hermetic pseudo-Egyptologist"150

60. Such correspondences fail to be applied mathematics, as mathematicians todayunderstand this term, because the mathematical structures don't correspond naturally to anything inthe events or things they are purported to apply to. Gematria, the association of numbers withqualities like justice or institutions like marriage are examples of what I call appliqu ªedmathematics. This is an attempt to attribute a mathematical structure to something which doesn'thave a mathematical structure, or at least has no interesting or revealing mathematical structure.One may be trying to quantify the unquantifiable. Examples might be attempts to apply partialdifferential equations to political movements in ways in which such equations are applied tophysical phenomena (although statistical sampling methods as used in polls might be applicable), orto the movements of Beethoven's symphonies (which isn't as wild an idea as it might seem, sincetimed sounds can in a certain sense be specified by such equations). Natural philosophers andtheir descendants, the natural scientists, must submit to the mathematics which is in the cosmos;magicians and astrologers try to force some mathematics on it which doesn't belong to it.

149 Henry Corbin, Temple et Contemplation, Essais sur l'Islam Iranien, 1980, "La science de la balanceet les correspondences entre les mondes en gnose islamique, p. 67-141.150 So characterized by Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 1972, p. 230; the square is given byHans Biedermann, Handlexikon der magischen K½nste, 2nd edition, 1973, p. 316.

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61. Edward Strong warns that the cabalistic and numerological maneuvers of suchFlorentine Platonists and Hermeticists as Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico did not provide ametaphysical foundation for the 16th and 17th century mathematical philosophers. ThesePlatonists were neither mathematically nor empirically minded. They were concerned with suchproblems as comparing the views of Plato and Aristotle on knowledge and being, and with thereconciliation of neo-Platonism and Hermeticism with orthodox Christianity. They did not engagein a mathematical realism, but in a mystical number symbolism. "Through love and through theknowledge of superior numbers, one penetrates into the inner mysteries. The way upward yieldsto spiritual love; but if one would know the workings of the creative spirit in the created things,he should consider symbolic number. As in Proclus, the divine numbers are defined in respect totheir status and function: their status is to symbolize and classify the incorporeal and incorruptiblebeings, and their function is to create copies in matter. Upon its own showing, the doctrine doesnot display the universe as a structure of mathematical order and relations. Rather, a religious andmystical system borrows number as a useful symbol of incorporeality and turns arithmetic intoarithmology. The divine appropriates the arithmetic, and arithmetic the divine, in the 'divinearithmetic' of these Neo-Platonists."151

62. The distinction between applied and appliqu ªed mathematics was made by Kepler(not in these terms) in his controversy with the physician, Robert Fludd, who was also analchemist, astrologer and Hermeticist.152 It appears to have been Kepler's harmony theory whichled to the controversy with Fludd, who also had propounded a theory of musical correspondences inhis Utriusque Cosmi ... historia (1617-1618). In Kepler's appendix to his Harmonice mundi (1619-- sometimes called Harmonices mundi), Kepler compares his own work with that of Ptolemy inthe 3rd book of Ptolemy's Harmonica, and also with the work of Fludd. As to Fludd, Keplerobjects that whereas he (Kepler) develops musical theory in considerable detail and thendemonstrates a celestial counterpart, Fludd gives a condensed version of a textbook for musicians,and then deals with practical matters of music-making. Kepler says: "... he differs from me as apractitioner from a theoretician. For while he considers [musical] instruments themselves, Iinvestigate causes or consonances in nature, and when he teaches how one can compose a tunewith many voices, I produce instead many mathematical demonstrations, that are in songs formedby nature as well as choral pieces."153

63. Furthermore, Kepler observes that Fludd derives his harmonies purely fromproperties of numbers, whereas he (Kepler) finds his from astronomical measurements. Indeed,

151 Strong, ibid., p. 196-197.

152 This interchange is described by (among others) Max Caspar in Kepler, 1946, translated from German by C.Doris Hellman, 1959, p. 290-293; by the Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on theScientific Theories of Kepler", in Naturerkl¥ rung und Psyche by Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, 1952, Englishtranslation by Priscilla Silz in The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955; by Frances Yates in GiordanoBruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1964, p. 440-444; by Robert Westman, "Nature, art, and psyche", in Occult andScientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, 1984, p. 177-229; and by Judith V. Field in Kepler's GeometricalCosmology, 1988, p. 179-187.

153 Johannes Kepler, Harmonice mundi, 1619, vol. 6 of Gesammelte Werke, p. 374; cf. the translation intoGerman by Max Caspar, Weltharmonik, 1939, reprinted 1971, which has something like this, translated into English (p.362): "For while he [Fludd] considers the instruments, I investigate the causes of nature or consonances, and when heteaches how one composes a song with many voices, I produce instead of this mathematical proofs for very manylaws that are valid for choral as well as the many-voiced singing out of nature."

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Fludd never makes any reference in his theories to an observed astronomical quantity. Keplerremarks that Fludd's Hermetic analogies 'are dragged in by the hair'. Field says: "The crucialdifference between Kepler and Fludd seems ... to be that Kepler demanded that his cosmologicaltheories should be in good numerical agreement with measured properties of the observableUniverse."154 That is, the mathematics should be applied, not appliquéed.

64. In Fludd's opinion Kepler's science refers only to the "outside of things", whereas he(Fludd) penetrates to the inner, invisible depths and holiness of things. Fludd distinguishedbetween formal mathematics (his own kind) and vulgar mathematics (Kepler's kind). Themathematics of Fludd was, in fact, largely numerology -- a kind of purely verbal manipulation ofnumbers. These verbal manipulations were, in turn, often extracted from or references to elaborateengravings which were basic in Fludd's system. This has been emphasized by Westman who sayswe must look at Fludd's engravings "not as illustrations but rather as ways of knowing,demonstrating, and remembering."155 Fludd's pictures, however, do not function in the waygeometrical diagrams do for Kepler. "It is as though Fludd's pictures," Westman says, whichappear to be about nature, are really pictures of psychic states; they are visualizations of intuitionsand feelings projected onto the world, but lacking any sufficient criterion of correspondence to anexternal reality."156

65. The mathematics of Kepler (1571-1630) was awakened in him by the cosmos, testedby way of observations, and found not to be purely a matter of words. "The divine voice," he saysin the Astronomia nova (1609), "which commands men to learn astronomy, expresses itself in theworld, not in words and syllables, but through things themselves and through the agreement of thehuman intellect and senses with the entirety of celestial bodies and phenomena."157 Kepler'spictures -- geometric diagrams --were projections of correspondences between geometricalrelations and images in his mind and geometrical relations realized outside him. Kepler's view inhis Harmonice mundi of the relationship between the human mind and the Divine Mind -- basedon an analogy with the center, circumference and radii of a circle -- fits in very well, as Pauliobserves, with an interpretation of knowledge as a "matching" of external impressions with pre-existent inner images.158

66. Kepler says: "For, to know is to compare that which is externally perceived withinner ideas and to judge that it agrees with them, a process which Proclus expressed verybeautifully by the word "awakening," as from sleep. For, as the perceptible things which appear inthe outside world make us remember what we knew before, so do sensory experiences, whenconsciously realized, call forth intellectual notions that were already present inwardly; so thatthat which formerly was hidden in the soul, as under the veil of potentiality, now shines thereinin actuality. How, then, did they [the intellectual notions] find ingress? I answer: All ideas orformal concepts of the harmonies, as I have just discussed them, lie in those beings that possess thefaculty of rational cognition, and they are not at all received within by discursive reasoning;

154 Field, ibid., p. 187.

155 Westman, ibid., p. 181.156 Westman, ibid., p.211.157 Quoted by Alexandre Koyrª, Astronomical Revolutions, 1973, p. 163, translation by R. E. W. Maddisonof La rªvolution astronomique, 1961.158 Pauli, ibid., p. 162.

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rather they are derived from a natural instinct and are inborn in those beings as the number (anintellectual thing) of petals in a flower or the number of seed cells in a fruit is innate in the formsof the plants. " 1 5 9

67. Kepler's cosmic harmonies are given by proportions. For example, Kepler asserted inthe Harmonices mundi that the slowest angular velocity of a planet at aphelion (position on theplanet's elliptical orbit furthest from the sun) is to the largest angular velocity of the planet atperihelion (position nearest the sun) as one small whole number is to another. Stated in anotherway, the ratio of the angular velocities equals the ratio of two whole numbers. One of the ratios inthis proportion (a proportion is an equality of ratios) is between two whole numbers, but the otheris between two quantities (the velocities) which can be represented by geometrical magnitudes.Furthermore, Kepler calculated that the ratios of the small whole numbers were ratioscorresponding to consonant musical intervals, such as a fifth, or a major or minor third, and thus,for example, equal to the ratios of the lengths of a string (or strings) which would produce thesounds of these intervals. For example, for Mars, he found a fifth, and for Earth, a minorsemitone.160

68. When two geometric magnitudes, or magnitudes which can be represented bygeometric magnitudes (such as velocities or weights) are compared in a ratio, the terms in theratio must be in the same units -- for velocities, both feet per second, or both kilometers per hour,etc. Kepler's third law of planetary motion maintains that the squares of the periods (times takenfor one revolution around the sun) of two planets are to each other as the cubes of the semi-majoraxes of the elliptical orbits on which they move (approximately) -- provided the the two periodsare in the same units, and the two lengths of the semi-major axes are in the same units. Theperiods, or the lengths of the semi-major axes, might be incommensurable (in the mathematicalsense, related to the difference between rational and irrational numbers) with some unit ofmeasure, but the ratios could still be equal to a ratio of small whole numbers. For example, inmodern terms, the ratio of 3 times pi to 2 times pi equals the ratio of 3 to 2.

69. Kepler took geometry to be fundamental to God's creation, and God's geometricalrelationships to be basic features of the cosmos which can be awakened in us by our sensorycontacts with the world outside us. He criticized the algebraists of his time for their lack ofdepth and their utilitarian attitudes. When it is a question of the foundations of mathematics, hesaid, it is necessary to return to geometry.161 The cosmic harmonies which he derived heconsidered to be characteristic of the cosmos by virtue of the fact that they arose from takingratios of geometrical magnitudes which appear in nature, and in us. That the magnitudes whichappear in us do indeed correspond to the ones outside of us can be verified by makingmeasurements outside of us to see if the proposed ratios of these magnitudes do indeed obtain.However, he says in the Harmonice mundi that we are born with archetypal harmonies in oursoul which are not images of harmonies, but the harmonies themselves -- indeed, theseharmonies are the soul.162 Fludd also was much concerned with cosmic harmonies, but Kepler

1 5 9 Quoted by Pauli, ibid., p. 162-163.160Alexandre Koyrª, The Astronomical Revolution, 1973, p. 335; translation by R. E. W. Maddison of La rªvolutionastronomique, 1961.161 Cf. Gªrard Simon, Kepler astronome astrologue, 1979, p. 149-153.162 Simon, ibid., p. 141.

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complained that Fludd's ratios did not arise from taking ratios of objective geometricalmagnitudes, but from subjective and arbitrary assignments of numbers to various pictures whichFludd carried around in his mind. Fludd's ratios were ratios of small whole numbers notconnected with actual cosmological magnitudes, except in the case of musical intervals.

70. Pauli remarks on Fludd's aversion to the quantitative, in the sense in which physiciststake this word. In Fludd's system, there are two polar fundamental principles, form as a principle oflight, coming from above, and matter, a dark principle, dwelling in the earth. Pauli says: "Fludd'sdepreciation of everything quantitative, which in his opinion belongs, like all division andmultiplicity, to the dark principle (matter, devil), resulted in a further essential difference betweenFludd's and Kepler's views concerning the position of the soul in nature. The sensitivity of the soulto proportions, so essential according to Kepler, in in Fludd's opinion only the result of itsentanglement in the (dark) corporeal world, whereas its imaginative faculties, that recognize unit,spring from its true nature originating in the light principle (forma). While Kepler represents thepoint of view that the soul is a part of nature, Fludd even protests against the concept "part" to thehuman soul, since the soul, being freed from the laws of the physical world, that is, in so far as itbelongs to the light principle, is inseparable from the whole worldsoul."163 It appears that Fluddused the wordforma rather as we commonly use the word symbol today.

71. Pauli says: "Fludd's attitude, however, seems to us somewhat easier to understandwhen it is viewed in the perspective of a more general differentiation between two types of mind, adifferentiation that can be traced throughout history, the one type considering the quantitativerelations of the parts to be essential, the other the qualitative visibility of the whole. We alreadyfind this contrast, for example, in antiquity in the two corresponding definitions of beauty: in theone it is the proper agreement of the parts with each other and with the whole, in the other (goingback to Plotinus) there is no reference to parts but beauty is the eternal radiance of the "One"shining through the material phenomenon. An analogous contrast can also be found later in thewell-known quarrel between Goethe and Newton concerning the theory of colours: Goethe had asimilar aversion to "parts" and always emphasized the disturbing influence of instruments on the'natural' phenomena."164

72. Kepler's mathematical images didn't always participate in correspondences in theway Kepler thought they would to begin with -- as comparison with nature external to himrevealed to him at times -- but in his view, they were intended to be used to establishcorrespondences of something implanted in him with something outside of him. Furthermore, hismathematics was based on the works of great mathematicians of antiquity such as Euclid,Apollonius and Archimedes, augmented by the work of numerous later "vulgar" mathematicians ofthe same kind (to use Fludd's pejorative designation), including himself. Most of thismathematics is as valid today as it ever was, and much of it is still widely applicable, thoughoften buried in complex mathematical systems and traditions elaborated since Kepler's time.

1 6 3 Pauli, ibid., p. 198-199. 164Pauli, ibid., p. 205 -206.

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73. Kepler was sometimes extravagant in his correspondences, by today's standards. Forexample, there was his proposal in the Mysterium cosmographium165 that the number and distanceof the planets follow a priori from properties of the five regular solids. However, he devotedincredible labor to testing this proposition against Tycho Brahe's observations. In his last majorwork, the Harmonices mundi (1619), this proposition had evolved into Kepler's third law ofplanetary motion, that the squares of the periods of the planets are proportional to the to the cubesof the semi-major axes of the ellipses in which they move. This law still stands, to a firstapproximation. Kepler's theory of the connection of musical harmony with the motions of thesolar system, a quantitative theory of the Pythagorean "music of the spheres", elaborated in theHarmonices Mundi, hasn't fared as well as his laws of planetary motion. But it was not occultphilosophy. "I hate all cabalists," said Kepler.

74. Pauli commented on the difference between people like Kepler, who are concernedwith the quantitative relations between parts of things, and people like Fludd, who are concernedwith qualitative visibility of wholes of things. There are other contrasts between the viewpoints ofFludd and Kepler. One lies in the use of language. In Chapter V of his work De stella nova (Onthe new star) (1606), Kepler argues at some length that the names of the signs of the zodiac arearbitrary, and don't have any occult significance. Gªrard Simon observes that these pages arecharacteristic of Kepler's attitude, and show that Kepler grasped the fact that traditional judicialastrology is based on a lack of distinction between the thing and the symbol, between the symboland the name, between the name and the meaning. "It is a question," Simon says, "of knowing ifwords conform to things."166

75. In the appendix to the Harmonices mundi, Kepler accuses both Ptolemy and Fludd ofconcocting cosmic harmonies which are "pure symbolisms ... poetical and rhetorical". It's an oldstory: the debate about the relation of language to the rest of reality, which goes back at least toPlato's Cratylus. The example of the zodiac doesn't reveal the profundity of the question. It isquite easy to believe that the names of the signs of the zodiac are named after quite arbitraryshapes assigned to certain constellations, and that, for example, Libra, the Scales, has noparticular connection with justice or fair-mindedness (although astrologers believe otherwise).But is all use of language arbitrary in this way?

76. In the De stella nova, Kepler ridicules the cabalists for regarding language as a directgift of God, and for extracting extravagant hidden meanings from words and phrases bytransposing their characters. It must be remembered, though, that on the basis of the book ofGenesis, the cabalists believed, as do many others, that God spoke the world into existence. And,as Robert Westman brings out, Fludd's major works are of the genre of commentaries on Genesis,and while "Fludd had a strong interest in the created world of nature -- perhaps much more sothan preceding commentators on Genesis -- his ultimate concern was still with Genesis itself."167

165 1st edition, 1597; 2nd edition with extensive added notes, 1621.166 Gªrard Simon, ibid., p. 102.167 Robert Westman, "Nature, Art and Psyche" in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, 1984,p. 125-229, especially p. 191-200; Westman cites Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An Account of theCommentaries on Genesis, 1527-1 633, 1948.

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77. Brian Vickers examines the distinction between analogy and identity, and betweenliteral and metaphorical language. He says: "In the scientific tradition, I hold, a clear distinction ismade between words and things and between literal and metaphorical language. The occulttradition does not recognize this distinction: Words are treated as if they are equivalent to things andcan be substituted for them. Manipulate the one and you manipulate the other. Analogies, insteadof being, as they are in the scientific tradition, explanatory devices subordinate to argument andproof, or heuristic tools to make models that can be tested, corrected, and abandoned if necessary,are, instead, modes of conceiving relationships in the universe that reify, rigidify, and ultimatelycome to dominate thought. One no longer uses analogies: One is used by them. They become theonly way in which one can think or experience the world."168

78. Vickers considers such exemplars of occult attitudes toward language as Boehme,Ficino, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Comenius and John Webster, and critics (as least by implication) ofsuch attitudes like Francis Bacon, Galileo, Seth Ward, John Wilkins, Daniel Sennert, Johann VanHelmont, Robert Boyle and John Locke. For example, there is Galileo's remark in "The Assayer",addressed to Lothario Sarsi, a pseudonymn of a Jesuit priest, Horatio Grassi: "I am not so surethat in order to make a comet a quasi-planet, and as such to deck it out in the attributes of otherplanets, it is sufficient for Sarsi or his teacher to regard it as one and so name it. If their opinionsand their voices have the power of calling into existence the things they name, then I beg them todo me the favor of naming a lot of old hardware I have about my house, "gold."169 Later in the samework, we find: "To excite in us tastes, odors, and sounds I believe that nothing is required inexternal bodies except shapes, numbers, and slow or rapid movements.

I think that if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions wouldremain, but not odors or tastes or sounds. The latter, I believe, are nothing more than nameswhen separated from living beings, just as tickling and titillation are nothing but names in theabsence of such things as noses and armpits."170

79. Isaac Newton had similar views. In a letter to Richard Bentley of 25 February1692/1693, he complains about a statement of Bentley's "representing it as absurd as that thereshould be positively an infinite arithmetical summ or number wch is a contradiction in terminis:but you do not prove it as absurd. Neither do you prove that what men mean by an infinite summor number is a contradiction in nature. For a contradiction in terminis argues nothing more thenan improperty of speech. Those things wch men understand by improper and contradictiousphrases may be sometimes really in nature wthout any contradiction at all. A silver inkhorn apaper Lanthorn an iron whetstone are absurd phrases & yet ye things signified are really innature."171

80. Vickers also refers to the controversy between Kepler and Fludd. Kepler's attitudetoward analogy is illustrated by a quotation from a letter of Kepler to Maestlin of 1605: "Every

168 Brian Vickers, "Analogy versus identity: the rejection of occult symbolism, 1580-1680", in Occult andscientific mentalities in the Renaissance, 1984, p. 95.

169 Galileo, "The Assayer" (Il Saggiatore), 1623, in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, 1957, translationsand notes by Stillman Drake.170 Galileo, ibid., p. 277.171 The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, edited by H. W. Turnbull, v. 3, 1961, p. 254.

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planetary body must be regarded as being magnetic, or quasi-magnetic; in fact, I suggest asimilarity, and do not declare an identity."172 In short, Kepler understood the limitations ofmathematical models.

81. Vickers quotes a 1968 Malinowski lecture of S. J. Tambiah, "The Magical Power ofWords", concerning the effect of "sacred words" which are "thought to possess a special kind ofpower not normally associated with ordinary language", derived from the widespread "ancientbelief in the creative power of the word". Examples are found in the Vedic hymns of the Hindus, incertain Buddhist doctrines, in the Iranian Parsi religion, in the religions of the ancient Sumerians,Egyptians and Semites who believed that the world and its objects were created by the word ofGod, and among the Greeks whose doctrine concerning logos postulated that the essence of thingslies in their names. In the Bible, for example, we find: "So shall my word be that goeth forth outof my mouth; it shall not reutrn unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please."173

82. In fact, the 3rd verse of the first book of Genesis reads in the Revised StandardVersion: "God said let there be light."—"God said let there be light." A little later, in Genesis2.19-20, it is said of the first man Adam: "So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast ofthe field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them;and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to allcattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field " In the Christian Gospel ofJohn, we have "in the beginning was the Word" and "the Word was God" and "the Word madeflesh". Here "Word" is a translation of logos, whose meaning is rather elastic, but which manyagree in this context refers to the "word of God" as understood in the Old Testament. PerhapsJohn also intended the word to carry its connotation of reason, and of order, as opposed to chaos.In any case, a great many Jewish, Muslim and Christian commentators stress the fact that Godcreated by speaking. Occasionally, a commentator will say that it is as if God created bycommanding orally, so creation would be analogous to language acts. But many hold that God'sacts of creation, as described in Genesis, were language acts. As a consequence, they regardlanguage as a most powerful and holy instrument. God gave this gift to Adam and, it is said, whenGod let Adam name the creatures, he gave them dominion—power—over them.

83. Questions of divinity aside, language is, of course, a most powerful instrument. Whowould deny the power of command, promise, entreaty, description, lying, literature, and all theother effective acts of language? In Plato's Cratylus, Socrates calls Pan the declarer and mover ofall things, and says he is speech, or the brother of speech. Who can conceive of human society,civilization, culture, not founded on the motive power of language? But mover of all things? Ofthe sun and planets, and the particles or waves or wavicles that compose them?

84. The limits of language are under constant review. Suffice it here to quote twoopposed points of view. "Learning to speak," says Han-Georg Gadamer, "does not mean to use apreexistent tool for designating a world already somehow familiar to us; it means acquiring afamiliarity and acquaintance with the world itself and how it confronts us Language is not adelimited realm of the speakable, over against which other realms that are unspeakable might

172 Koyrª , loc . ci t . , p . 252 .

173 Isa iah 55:11 .

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stand. Rather, language is all-encompassing. There is nothing that is fundamentally excludedfrom being said, to the extent that our act of meaning intends it."174

85. Contrarily, Alfred North Whitehead says: "Language was developed in response tothe excitements of practical actions. It is concerned with the prominent facts But theprominent facts are the superficial facts .......There are other elements in our experience, on thefringe of consciousness, and yet massively qualifying our experience ....... Language is incompleteand fragmentary, and merely registers a stage in the average advance beyond ape-mentality. Butall men enjoy flashes of insight beyond meanings already stabilized in etymology and grammar.Hence the rµle of literature, the rµle of the special sciences, and the rµle of philosophy: -- in theirvarious ways engaged in finding expressions for meanings as yet unexpressed."175

86. Kepler made the point that naming a sign of the zodiac Scorpio after a tenuousresemblance of a constellation to a scorpion does not give the sign, or planets in the sign, anycapacity to instill in humans any of the characteristics of scorpions. This is a false conclusionbased on an invalid analogy. But Kepler didn't reject the usefulness of analogy in general.Alexandre Koyrª observes that in Kepler's Astronomia nova, when Kepler was concerned with thenature of the force which causes the planets to revolve around the sun, he says we can onlyproceed by analogy with other more usual, better known emanations, notably light and magneticforce. Kepler commented that if we proceed in this way, our knowledge of the motive force ofthe sun will be vague and incomplete. But it gives some idea of the kind of reality we are dealingwith.176

87. Kepler's attitude toward analogy resembles to a degree (is analogous to!) Galileo'sattitude toward idealization, about which Koyré wrote so eloquently in his ~tudes galil ªennes.Galileo conceived of bodies falling in vacuums, frictionless surfaces, undisturbed objects movingforever with constant velocities equal to their initial velocities (in circles, to be sure), the orbits ofcannonballs being perfect parabolas (just as the ancients had conceived of the paths of the stars asbeing perfect circles -- but the cannonballs are sublunary), simple pendulums being isochronous(a little off, but nearly right for small oscillations). As we would say today, Galileo producedmathematical models for various physical states or processes, and such models capture only certainquantitative aspects of phenomena. Kepler was also much given to making geometric models, andhe was especially fond of his exotic model of the solar system based on the regular and star-shaped polyhedra.

88. Neither Kepler's nor Galileo's models agreed exactly or completely with reality.Mathematical models seldom do. They are idealizations or abstractions, and, in the case ofquantities conceived of as continuous, inevitably introduce some degree of approximation.Galileo's treatise in which he founds the science of strength of materials contains drawings ofunidealized wooden beams, with knots in the wood visible, and showing plants growing out of

174 Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Man and Language" (1966), in Philosophical Hermeneutics, 1976, p. 63, 67,translated by David Linge from Gadamer's Kleine Schriften.

175 Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures in Ideas, 1933, p. 166-167, p. 227-228.176Koyrª, ibid, p. 199.

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crevices in the stone wall in which the beam is anchored.177 Galileo's geometrical idealizationsand abstractions obviously don't capture all the properties of such objects, but only certainessential properties -- essential for Galileo's purpose.

89. As for Kepler, he realized in the long run that his lovely model with inscriptions andcircumscriptions of the regular solids in the planetary spheres didn't match reality, and that noteven the introduction of the star-shaped semi-regular polyhedra would give an exact model. But themodel served to guide him to the discovery of his three planetary laws, which have endured. Theytoo, however, apply only to idealized systems, such as the pair consisting of one planet and the sun,with the sun fixed, in which the effects of other planets and objects are ignored. And even hereone often considers the planet and the sun as mere points, rather than extended bodies. Thus thelaws yield only good approximations to certain behavior of planets. It isn't too easy to give aprecise meaning to the "good" in "good approximations", but it is clear to many who compare thepredictions of the laws with actual measurements that the approximations given by the laws are notsubjective assignments of numbers to the phenomena: the laws can be used to estimate somethingwhich is happening outside their users.

90. We have seen something of the gulf between number mysticism and appliedmathematics. Johannisson's assertion that the Hermetic tradition stressed "rationality in amathematical sense" must not be taken as support for the contention that natural philosopherswere led by Hermeticists to realize the place or importance of mathematics in such sciences asastronomy and physics. People applying mathematics to nature on the whole have had to struggleagainst the influence of Hermeticists. This judgement is not a new one. For example, RobertWestman concludes in a study of the supposed contributions of Hermeticism to the ScientificRevolution: "Kepler and Galileo provide specific criteria for allowing us to weight one theoryabove another in terms of their mathematical intelligibility and their empirical adequacy. This theHermeticists failed to do because they either separated mathematics from natural philosophy orcould not see how they were connected or totally subordinated mathematical statements tophysical ones What significant physical and mathematical insights Bruno and other allegedHermeticists arrived at came from their individual, creative intuitions, often under the influence ofdoctrines first formulated in medieval natural philosophy, and in spite of their adherence toHermetic doctrines."178

91. Johannisson also discusses the role of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism in earlymodern science. "The Rosicrucians," she says, "-- whether existing as an actual society or not --integrated in their program an open view of the world and a rejection of the Church's authoritytogether with a passionate belief in science as the way to progress." (ibid.) Their science wasbased on Hermeticism and Paracelsianism, and comprised chiefly magic, cabala and alchemy. Tothese, Johannisson adds "mathematics, physics, cosmology, and a medicine that stressedhumanitarian ends." However, the mathematics and physics were more in the manner of Fludd

177 Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno … due nuove scienze, 1638; the drawings areon p. 116 and 119 of the translation into English by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio, Dialogues concerning TwoNew Sciences, 1914.

178 Robert Westman, "Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis Reconsidered", inHermeticism and the Scientific Revolution, 1977, p. 71, his italics.

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than of Kepler, and show little trace of the tradition of Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes or thequantitative natural philosophers of the Middle Ages who studied the motions of physicalobjects.

92. A number of the theses of Frances Yates, especially those having to do withRosicrucianism have been toned done by most of her followers -- Johannisson, it seems, is one ofthe more faithful. In 1979, Brian Vickers went so far as to argue at length that in her book TheRosicrucian Enlightenment, "Yate's proposed rewriting of Renaissance history is an edifice builtnot on sand but on air." 179 Still, Merkel and Debus say in 1988 that "there are few who would nowdispute that, taken in context, the Rosicrucian tracts were of great concern to seventeenth -centuryscientists and physicians representing many schools of thought."

93. Newton wrote a few comments on a Hermetic tract, described by Betty JoTeeterDobbs.180 Newton carried out extensive alchemical studies.181 Alchemy is of an age and naturecomparable to astrology, and connections between the two are ancient. For example, the basicmetals were associated with planets (as always, including the sun and moon), and astrologicaland alchemical significances of the planets and the metals were interwoven.

94. The psychologist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung argued at length that much of thesymbolism of such studies, especially of alchemy, arose from projections of changes of thepersonality of the investigators onto their material. The older alchemy, according to Jung, neverhad as its central aim the investigation of the nature of matter and its combinations. Suchmaneuvers as it undertook that we would be willing to today to admit as bonafide chemistry weresecondary to the work of psychological transformation which was performed by way of alchemicaloperations. In this view, only during the course of the 17th century did a kind of rationalistic andmaterialistic alchemy precipitate out of the older alchemy, by way of corpuscular and mechanicaltheories of matter, in which matter was conceived to be made of tiny particles moving according toregular patterns.

95. It should be kept in mind that in our concentration on the heavens, on astral religionand astrology, and later, on mathematical cosmology and the initiation of celestial mechanics, wemust guard against a distortion of the attitudes of the people who have pursued these subjects.Although of course there were individual differences, such people were often also very interested inthe transformations of matter on earth, and didn't always try to live with their heads above thelunar sphere. Whatever the merit of Jung's theories about the psychological burden of alchemy,many natural philosophers were concerned with what we would call chemical reactions, although tobe sure until the 17th century these were usually presented in a context of some four or fiveelement theory (fire, air, earth, water, and "fifth essence"—quintessence or aether) inherited fromantiquity.

179 Brian Vicker, "Frances Yates and the Writing of History", Journal of Modern History, v. 51, no. 2, 1979, p.287-316.180 "Newton's Commentary on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: Its Scientific and TheologicalSignificance", 1988, in Hermeticism and the Renaissance, Intellectual History and the Occult in Early ModernEurope, 1988, based on a 1982 meeting, edited by Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus, p. 182-191. The remark inthe previous paragraph is from the introduction, by Merkel and Debus.

181 Betty Jo TeeterDobbs, The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, or "The Hunting of the Greene Lyon ", 1975.

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96. During the late 16th and early 17th century in Europe there was a kind of floweringof alchemy, analogous to the flowering of astrology in that period. Dobbs says: "In their rejectionof the pagan accounts of natural phenomena offered by Aristotle and Galen, RenaissanceHermeticists had come to emphasize anew the importance of the first chapter of the book ofGenesis. In Genesis was a divine account of the creation of the world, one which could not bedisputed, and one which could lend itself to interpretation as a divine chemical separation. If the actof creation itself was to be understood chemically, then all of nature was to be understoodsimilarly. In short, chemistry was the key to all nature, the key to all the macrocosmic-microcosmic relationships sought by Robert Fludd and others. A study of chemistry was a studyof God as He had Himself written out His word in the Book of Nature. Such a study could onlylead one closer to God and was conceived as having moral value as well as contributing to thebetter grasp of the workings of nature and to the providing of better medicines for the relief ofman's illnesses."182

97. In the 17th century, it was a common assumption of the "corpuscularians" -- ofwhom Robert Boyle (1627-169 1) is perhaps the most famous -- that everything natural is made ofelementary corpuscles or particles, all made of the same kind of matter. Dobbs says: "Theprimitive particles might differ in figure and magnitude, as did the letters of the alphabet; largerunits, like words, were formed by the combinations of the primitive particles in different orders,groups, and positions. The alphabet analogy was quite commonly drawn upon to explainchemical changes. Yet however the particles might differ in size, shape, and arrangement, theywere all made from the same basic substance."183 Thus we are tempted to make a link betweenJewish kabbalism and the alphabetical notation of our own chemistry.

98. Newton spent considerable time and effort on alchemy, but it remains difficult to sayexactly how alchemy and Hermeticism influenced his work in mechanics. J. E. McGuire hasargued that "Newton's intellectual orientation embodies a framework of concepts that largelyemerge from the Neoplatonism developed by his Cambridge contemporaries" and that "traditions ofmagic and alchemy did not play a significant role in shaping Newton's conception of nature."Hermeticism played a limited role in Cambridge natural philosophy, he says, because theCambridge Platonists sought a restoration of Neoplatonism, which they tried to legitimize byrelating their writings to Christian Hermeticism. "For a short time in the early 1 690s," McGuiresays, "Newton explicitly accepted this ideology, but, like his Cambridge contemporaries, he didnot accept any specific Hermetic doctrines."184

99. On the other hand, Richard Westfall argues: "I am seeking the source of theNewtonian concept of forces of attraction and repulsion between particles of matter, the conceptthat fundamentally altered the prevailing philosophy of nature and ushered in the intellectualworld of modern science, I am offering the argument that alchemy, Newton's involvement inwhich a vast corpus of papers establishes, offered him a stimulus to consider concepts beyond thebare ontology of the mechanical philosophy. It appears to me that the Newtonian concept of

182Dobbs, ibid., 1975, p. 61.

1 8 3 Dobbs, ibid., p. 46.184J. E. McGuire, "Neoplatonism and Active Principles: Newton and the Corpus Hermeticum", in Hermeticism andthe Scientific Revolution, 1977, p. 13 1-133.

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force embodies the enduring influence of alchemy upon his scientific thought."185 Westfall sayshe sees no necessary opposition between his views and McGuire's. He takes McGuire to haveshown that the Platonism of Newton's teachers at Cambridge, in which one finds a concept of"active principles", influenced Newton's conception of force. Westfall agrees, and says thatalchemy influenced Newton's conception of force, too. He observes that: "... for every page inNewton's papers of direct reference to [the Cambridge Platonists] More and Cudworth there arewell over a hundred on alchemy. I cannot make those papers disappear." 186

100. Dobbs, Westfall and others, have said that Newton's concept of force, one of thecentral and more mysterious concepts in Newton's mechanics (his theory of how pieces of matterbehave), descended at least partly from his alchemical ideas. There has been an enormous debateover the ontological status of Newton's forces. Newton himself indicates at the beginning of hisPrincipia that there are three kinds of forces: resistive force, or inertia; impressed force, whichtends to change the state of a body from rest or uniform (constant velocity) motion, and of which hementions the three kinds, from percussion, from pressure and centripetal; and attracting force,such as gravity (repelling force is not mentioned here, although presumably a centripetal forcemight be interpreted as repelling -- Newton does speak of repelling forces elsewhere in thePrincipia.187 Procedures for quantitatively measuring forces are provided by Newton's three lawsof motion188, especially the second law which, in our terms, asserts that a force on body is to bemeasured by the rate of change in momentum of the body it produces, where the momentum of abody is to be found by measuring the mass and velocity of the body, and multiplying thesetogether.189 Thus, in the case of a mass constant in time, a quantity of force acting on a body isproportional to the acceleration of the body, the rate at which its velocity changes.

101. The question has often been asked, do Newton's definitions and axioms constitute adefinition of force? Is "force" just a word we use for rates of changes of momentum, or is theresomething in addition to this which constitutes the force, a "power" or "cause" or "activity"?190 Anumber of physicists and philosophers have taken the attitude that Newton's statements should beinterpreted as defining the word "force", and felt that to postulate any additional underlyingproperties would be to introduce non-existent or useless or nonsensical "metaphysical" principles.The only way we know a force to be present, in this view, is to make physical measurements, andinterpret them according to Newton's laws. For a fixed mass, if an acceleration is found bymeasurement, then a force has acted, and not otherwise.

102. In the earlier years of the debate, beginning in Newton's own lifetime, the word"occult" rather than "metaphysical" was often used. Many natural philosophers, especiallyDescartes and his followers, wished to eliminate "occult properties" from physical science. Thisindeed was one of the most revolutionary aspects of the Cartesian philosophy, and one which

185 Richard Westfall, "Newton and alchemy", p. 330 in Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance,1984, p. 3 15-335.186 Westfall, ibid., p. 331.187 Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (MathematicalPrinciples of NaturalPhilosophy, familiarly known as the Principia), 1687, Motte's translation revised by Cajori, 1934, p. 2.188 ibid., p. 13; see Appendix to this chapter.189Newton's definition, ibid., p. 1.1 9 0 See, for example, Ernst Nagel, The Structure of Science, 1961, Chapter 7, esp. p. 186-192.

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goes a long way toward explaining its enormous success in connection with physics, even thoughDescartes' detailed physical theories were often faulty, and also the considerable opposition itprovoked among theologians, despite Descartes' care to avoid controversy with ecclesiasticalauthorities. Descartes argued for a sharp separation between matter and spirit, and to a largeextent reduced matter to mere extension, something amenable to mathematical description. In theastrological, alchemical and theological contexts of the time, this must have seemed to some likean infusion of pure oxygen, and to others like an intrusion of poison gas. In either case, it was notsomething philosophers could take lightly.

103. Descartes’ views were not wholly agreeable to Newton and some of his teachers andfollowers for a number of both physical and theological reasons, and a considerable debate grewup around this question. One of the reasons Newton wrote the Principia was to make acontribution to the overthrow of certain aspects of the Cartesian philosophy, as Euclid's motive inthe Elements may have been to introduce people to the theory of regular polyhedra -- both worksturned out to be monumentally more applicable. Part of the continuing debate hinged on whetheror not there are spiritual components of forces. Questions like these were asked: are the planetsheld in their courses by continual divine action, or were they set in motion by divine action andleft to run on their own, or were they set in motion by purely physical actions, or have they simplybeen running forever?

104. The arguments of later philosophers, especially a host of positivists from Comte tothe present, over whether or not Newtonian forces can only be recognized by making physicalmeasurements and seeing whether or not they satisfy Newton's laws leave out the way Newtonarrived at the concept of force. Some positivists have said about this, roughly speaking, that they areonly interested in reconstructing mechanics on a sound logical basis, and not in how thediscoveries were made. Some years ago, reference was prevalent to a "context of discovery"versus a "context of verification". It is certainly true that physicists since the 17 th century C.E.have paid little serious attention to the astrological and alchemical background of classicalmechanics, and seem in many ways to have been the better for it. Still, we may enquire whether ornot a knowledge of the background might lead to the re-introduction, suitable refined andmodified, of some of the older notions which are excluded by a positivistic point of view. Indeed,we may go further and ask whether or not many physicists still harbor and frequently make use ofthoughts about forces and energy which go beyond measurements interpreted according tomathematical equations. For one thing, with the advent of quantum mechanics, observers havecatapulted back into a prominence which they formerly had. If Carl Jung and his followers areright, one of the great differences between alchemy and chemistry as we know understand lies inthe amount to which the minds and emotions of observers is present within the practice of alchemyitself, and absent from our practice of chemistry -- at least officially.

105. The physicist Paul Davies says: "In daily life we see the activity of forces allaround us. The force of gravity guides the planets in their motion and raises the ocean tides.Electrical forces display themselves in thunderstorms. Mechanical forces drive our machinesand our own bodies. Everywhere we look, matter is subjected to forces of some sort, arisingfrom a multitude of agencies The world is full of objects -- people, planets, clouds, atoms,flowers -- and full of motion. Things happen when moving objects act collectively. How doobjects know about each other? How do they respond to the presence and activities of other

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objects? ..... Although uniform motion is natural and needs no explanation, changes in motionrequire the action of some external agency. Because the state of uniform motion is regarded asnatural, we say that when a body is disturbed from this state it is beingforced. The agencieswhich produce forced motion are called forces. It is the action of forces which enriches theactivity of our universe, and which enables different parts of the world to be aware of eachother's existence. Without forces, nothing could act on or influence anything else, and all thematter in the universe would disintegrate into its elementary constituents, each subatomicparticle moving independently of all the others."191

106. Just so: agencies, actions, influences. Davies goes on: "The effect of a force on amaterial body is to bring about an acceleration. This is described by Newton's second law Todetermine how a body responds to a given force F, which may be varying from time to time andplace to place in both magnitude and direction, it is necessary to solve [ F = ma] for the positionof the body."192 The force is there before the acceleration, and before the equation, and it takes abrave philosopher to maintain this is only manner of speaking.

107. The physicist James Trefil remarks that the Nobel laureate physicist RichardFeynman once said, in the witty way he had, that in pre-Newtonian theories of planetary motion,"you have to have angels following the planets along, flapping their wings to move them." Headded that in Newton's explanation, "the angels flapped their wings to push each planet toward thesun, rather than along its orbit."193 I don't know if this was a pure joke, or if Feynman wasrevealing a knowledge of how theories of planetary motion actually developed. We will see laterthat the theory that angels control the planets was a popular one in the European Middle Ages. Forexample, St. Thomas Aquinas held a version of it.

108. At one stage in his work, up through the 1670's, Newton postulated a kind of"universal subtle matter" or "aether", which could be used to explain the attractive force ofgravity and other forces.194 It was, so to speak, a kind of "unified field theory", or GTE (GrandTheory of Everything). Newton never could quite make this theory work, but he didn't abandonthe idea of a universal aether entirely. In what appear to have been his last ruminations about themechanism of the world, in the Queries at the end of his Opticks195, he speculates on a very thin,exceedingly "elastick and active" aetherial medium -- definitely not a fluid -- which conveys lightand heat, and "pervades all Bodies", and is "(by its elastick force) expanded through all theHeavens", and can also be used to account for the mechanism of vision.196

109. Newton goes so far as to ask: "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into oneanother, and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light whichenter their Composition?"197 There is considerable speculation in the Queries on the nature of

191 Paul Davies, The Forces of Nature, 2nd edition, 1986, p. 1-2.192 Davies, ibid., p. 3.193 James Trefil, Reading the Mind of God, 1989, p. 8.194 Shades of Plato’s aether!195 4th edition, 1730.196 Isaac Newton, Opticks, 1730, Dover edition, 1952, p. 339-406.

197Newton, ibid., p. 374.

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chemical interactions, based on a corpuscular theory of matter. And in the very last sentence ofthe Opticks, he takes a swipe at astral religion: "And no doubt, if the Worship of false Gods hadnot blinded the Heathen, their moral philosophy would have gone farther than to the four CardinalVirtues; and instead of teaching the Transmigration of Souls and to worship the Sun and Moon,and dead Heroes, they would have taught us to worship our true Author and Benefactor, as theirAncestors did under the Government of Noah and his Sons before they corrupted themselves."(ibid., p. 406.)

110. While Newton failed to make his unified aether theory work in general, he certainlymade his theory of forces work in the domains to which he applied them. In Dobb's words: "Theuniverse lived again as Newton's thoughts swung on toward the Principia in the 1680's, for forcesand active principles were everywhere. Not only was there the attractive force of gravity bindingthe planets into a vibrant whole, there was also activity in the sub-structure of matter. Gone, inNewton's mind, were the inert particles of Cartesian matter resting quiescently together betweenimpacts. In their place were structured corpuscles of increasing complexity, held together uponoccasion by attractive forces of their own, but also capable upon other occasions of repelling eachother. Change was the order of the day in the little world and matter matured and decayed andwas constantly replenished by active principles."198 Newton's universe did not run like a clock. Anuntellable number of writers have referred to Newton's system of the world as a clockwork ormachine-like universe, but as far as Newton himself is concerned -- aside from various of hisfollowers -- the accusation is not just. It might be better attributed to Descartes or even Leibniz,with whom Newton was frequently at odds.

111. In his Introduction to the Principia, Newton defines rational mechanics (asdistinguished from practical mechanics) to be "the science of motions resulting from any forceswhatever, and of the forces required to produce any motions, accurately proposed anddemonstrated." He offers his work as "the mathematical principles of philosophy", and says thatthis philosophy consists in this -- "from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces ofnature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena; and to this end thegeneral propositions in the first and second Books are directed." Newton continues: "In the thirdbook I give an example of this in the explication of the System of the World; for by thepropositions mathematically demonstrated in the former Books, in the third I derive from celestialphenomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and several planets. Then fromthese forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, I deduce the motions of theplanets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena ofNature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles, for I am induced by manyreasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies,by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards one another, and coherein regular figures, or are repelled and recede from one another. These forces being unknown,philosophers have hitherto attempted the seach of Nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laiddown will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy."199 It appears fromthis that he had even greater goals in mind than those he

1 9 8 Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, or "The Hunting of the Greene Lyon", 1975., p.212.199Newton, ibid., p. xvii-xviii.

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achieved in the Principia, and that the Queries in the Opticks are as close as he came to reachingthem. Do you suppose Newton thought he had failed in what he wanted to do?

112. Paul Davies wrote a second version of his The Forces of Nature, he says, to takeaccount of new theories that there is a single "superforce" in which all forces have their origin.(Davies, ibid., p. vii.) There has been great hope among certain physicists that a GUT (GrandUnified Theory) of this kind will be generally accepted in the near future. But even if thisdoesn't come to pass, the success that Newton had with his forces remains, suitably altered tomeet the demands of relativity and quantum theory.

113. James Trefil says of his book Reading the Mind of God:: "This book is about anidea, one of the most astonishing and least appreciated ideas in modern science. I call it theprinciple of universality. It says that the laws of nature we discover here and now in ourlaboratories are true everywhere in the universe and have been in force for all time."200 Trefilgoes on to say that has found in lecturing to a wide variety of audiences that those not made upof university scientists give evidence of not knowing about this kind of universality. Hisexplanation is: "The principle of universality is so important that it is never explicitly taught. We[scientists] learn about it almost by osmosis. It pervades our work, particularly in fields likeastronomy, but is seldom explicitly stated."201 If Trefil is right, many people even today assumeunless taught otherwise that celestial objects play according to different rules than materialthings on earth.

114. This doesn't, though, in itself exclude theories in which angels control planets,unless angelic control is confined to a kind of perfect celestial matter, different in kind fromterrestrial matter. One need only extend angelic control to everything that moves. Furthermore,Newton's idea of universality had precedents. Some of the Stoics, for example, believed that theuniverse, the Divine Mind and ordinary matter everywhere, is made of one kind of stuff, such asChrysippus'pneuma, and they had the idea that Fate rules the world with the orderliness of theheavens, akin to the idea that there are natural laws which are the same throughout the physicalworld. Some of the pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece had ideas of the same genre, concerningelements or atoms, and logos or cosmos. A number of them had systems in which there was morethan one kind of stuff, but most of these postulated the same several kinds of stuff everywhere.There were also the long-lived theories, popular among astrologers and poets, of man, amicrocosm, correlated with the universe, the macrocosm. All of these are kinds of physicaluniversality.

115. What was different about Newton's kind of universality? Newton had a concept ofmomentum, which can be very simply measured by multiplying inertial mass times velocity, and aconcept offorce as a rate at which momentum is changed. And he had a mathematical technique,the calculus, which could be used, in some important cases, to find mathematical expressions fordetermining the motion of a body when mathematical expressions for the forces acting on the bodyare known. His law of gravity gave an expression for one force, the inverse square expression forgravity. That there is something reasonable about the way matter moves was not a novel idea inthe time of Newton, nor was the idea that there are quantitative

200 James Trefi l , Reading the Mind of God, 1989, p . 1.

201 Tref i l , ibid. , p . 2.

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expressions describing such motions, nor was the idea that matter is made of the same kind ofstuff everywhere. But who would have thought, until Newton, that a program for derivingmathematical expressions giving the successive of moving objects could be laid down with threesuch simple laws, which can be stated in three sentences? Such a simple program! Alas, findingexpressions for all the relevant forces acting on an object is seldom easy and probably sometimesimpossible, and even when such expressions have been found, carrying out the program hasturned out in many important cases to be mathematically very difficult, and most likely sometimesimpossible in any deterministic or at least determinable (or, as some say, computable) way. Butwhen Newton's method works, it works like magic!

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Appendix to Chapter 2: Newton’s Laws

A1. In the latter part of the 17th century, Isaac Newton, building on the work of manypredecessors, formulated a small number of laws from which quantitative predictions aboutthe movements of objects in the heavens can be made. It was soon realized that somemovements of terrestrial objects could also be predicted with Newton's laws. While celestialobjects are nowadays seen to change, and even in a certain sense to be born, live and die,the Newtonian laws according to which they change seem to be permanent, although theyhave been extended in various ways. Newton's laws and the myriad of consequences whichhave been drawn from them make up classical or Newtonian mechanics, sometimes calledrational or analytical mechanics. The part of classical mechanics which applies to themotions of objects in the heavens is commonly called celestial mechanics.

A2. In his textbook on classical mechanics (1985), Laurence Taff observes thatclassical mechanics rests on Newton's three Laws of Motion, and he states them as they arein Newton's Principia, 1687 (translated from Latin):

Newton's First Law. "Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a rightline, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it."

Uniform motion of a body is motion with a constant velocity, that is, with unchanging speedand direction. A right line is what we now call a straight line.

Newton's Second Law. "The change of motion is proportional to the motive force impressedand is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed."

The motion of a body is defined by Newton to be the product of a quantity called the mass ofthe body, which measures its reluctance to change its state, with the velocity of the body,which measures the rate at which its distance from some reference point is changing, andalso specifies a direction in which the change is taking place. This is called momentumtoday. The velocity and/or direction may change at each instant of time. The change inmotion is actually the rate of change of momentum. Except in a few simple cases aquantitative statement that this rate of change of momentum is proportional to impressedforces requires the techniques of the mathematical discipline known as calculus. To say therate of change of momentum is proportional to the impressed forces is to say that it issome fixed number multiplied by the quantity which measures the force at each point ofspace and instant of time. The particular fixed number or constant to be used is differentfor different units of measurement for time, distances and forces (second or years, metersor feet or miles, pounds or dynes, etc.). Often impressed forces are different at each point ofspace, but at any one given point are the same for each instant of time.

Newton's Second Law is the most dominant of the three laws of motion since it gives arecipe for forming differential equations. These are statements made using concepts ofcalculus. In many cases they can be solved using methods of calculus, in one or anothersense of the word solved (including approximate solutions), to give quantitative descriptionsof the behavior of a great number of physical, chemical, biological, geological, statistical,and other kinds of systems. It can be shown that the first law can be derived as the special

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case of the second law in which the magnitude of the impressed forces is zero.

When the word motion in the second law is interpreted as momentum, and thismeaning is used in the first law, the statement in the first law that a body tends to continuein a state of uniform motion in a straight line can be interp reted to mean that themomentum of a body in such a state will stay the same as it moves, so Newton's First Lawcontains a law of conservation of linear momentum.

Newton's Third Law. "To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, themutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and directed to contraryparts."

This should not be taken to mean that objects never move. If I push on you, thus exerting aforce, and you move backwards, an explanation according to Newton’s Third Law is that yourreaction push was at the instant of contact equal in magnitude to my push, though in theopposite direction (along a straight line). This diminished the magnitude of my push in anamount equal to the magnitude of the push you exerted. Howe ver, although my push wasweakened, there was still some more of my push it left over, so to speak, so you weresubjected to an acceleration in the direction of my push –-- and you moved.

To do celestial mechanics, Taff observes, one supplements these postulates withNewton's Law of Gravitation:

Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. "Every particle in the Universe attracts every otherparticle in the Universe with a force that varies directly as the product of their masses andinversely as the square of the distance between them; furthermore, this force acts along theline joining the two particles."

Thus the force of gravity exerted by one particle on another particle can be measured byfinding numbers measuring their masses in some way, and multiplying these together; thenfinding the distance between the particles in some way and squaring it and dividing theresult into the product of the masses; and finally, multiplying by a fixed number determinedby the units of measurement being used. (Laurence G. Taf f, Celestial Mechanics, AComputational Guide for the Practitioner, 1985, p. 1-2; Taff's quotations from Newton'sPrincipia are from the translation by Florian Cajori, 1934, p. 13-14, and Newton's definitionsof motion, mass (or quantity of matter and vis insita), impressed force, etc., are given on p. 1-6.) The gravitational forces which bodies exert on other bodies are determined by regardingbodies as made up of particles in some way, and using techniques of calculus. This is not avery easy task, on the whole. Its study is known as potential theory (for reasons we won't gointo here).

A3. Having stated these laws of classical mechanics, and supplemented it withNewton's Law of Gravitation in order to do celestial mechanics, Taff observes that there isessentially no more physics in his book -- the rest is mathematics. In effect, Taff definesclassical mechanics to consist of the consequences of Newton's three laws of motion, asworked out using methods of mathematics, and celestial mechanics to consist of the

consequences of the laws of motion together with the law of gravitation. From this point of

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view, the "impressed forces" spoken of in Newton's Second Law are confined to gravitationalforces when doing what one might call “pure” celestial mechanics.

A4. The word mechanistic is open to conflicting interpretations. Some have taken it tobe opposed to animistic, so a mechanistic universe is one in which planets and the like haveno internal principles of change, as they did for Aristotle and countless others. In particular, forsome, divine guidance is precluded in a mechanistic universe. The attitude is captured in astory about Laplace. Napoleon is supposed to have asked Laplace why he never mentionedthe Creator in his work on celestial mechanics, and Laplace is supposed to have replied:"Sire, j'ai pu me passer de cette hypothèse" -- "Sir, I have been able to dispense with thathypothesis."

A5. Others have taken a mechanistic universe to be one made out of gear wheels,pulleys, levers, springs and the like, in the manner of a machine, which runs and has runforever on its own. However, the author of the Laws of Motion, Newton, believed that aCreator was involved in the working of the world. Aside from divine guidance, he also speaksin Definition III of the Principia of bodies having inertia or vis insita (innate force), an internalpower of resisting change in motion, tending to make it continue in whatever state it is in. Thisattributes to machines something beyond their mere extension in space and time. Because ofthis proposal, and because he was not able to find a satisfactory mechanical model for histheory of gravity (although he made a few conjectures), Newton was accused by followers ofDescartes of introducing so-called "occult powers" into natural philosophy of the kind whichhad been popular among medieval scholastic philosophers, and which Descartes had been atgreat pains to banish. Descartes himself had tried to base a theory of gravity on the motion ofvortices -- little whirlpools, so to speak. An important part of Newton's purpose in writing hisPrincipia was to show that Descartes's model doesn't work as an explanation of gravitation.

A6. Thus the connection of classical mechanics with machines is not as close as somehave thought. There is also the question of mathematics. E. J. Diksterhuis made a study ofthe transition to "classical science" which took place during the 17th century, and came tothis conclusion: "The mechanization of the world-picture during the transition from ancient toclassical science meant the introduction of a description of nature with the aid of themathematical concepts of classical mechanics; it marks the beginning of themathematization of science, which continues at an ever-increasing pace in the twentiethcentury." (E. J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture, 1961, p. 501,translation by C. Dikshoorn of De Mechanisering van het Werelbeeld, 1950.) That is,according to Dijksterhuis, the transition to a mechanized universe was characterized notmerely by the use of machine-like models, but by the introduction of mathematically baseddescriptions and theories. However, mathematical descriptions are sometimes more thandescriptions of machines. Or so I believe -- there are those who have maintained otherwise.

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Chapter 3. Some Astrological Techniques

1. We have discussed astrology, and in particular judicial or horoscopic astrology, as amethod of prediction, but we haven't yet gone into much detail about its techniques. In fact, thedetails and methods have undergone much change over the course of centuries. However, inEurope, at the time of the Renaissance, the basic procedures of that branch of predictive astrologyconcerned with casting horoscopes were roughly as they are now. The process of casting ahoroscope (or "figure" or "scheme") begins with locating the positions of various celestial objects.For birth horoscopes (nativities or genitures), one starts with as exact a value as one can determineof the day, hour and minute of birth of a person, together with the longitude and latitude of theplace of birth. Using tables calculated by astronomers for a fixed time, longitude and latitude(different astrologers may use different tables), the positions of the planets (taken to include the sunand moon), and perhaps certain stars, are calculated using the local time and geographicalcoordinates, and located in one of the signs of the zodiac. The sun and moon are considered asplanets for this purpose, and the sun is considered as the most important of the planets.

2. The zodiac, which is an imaginary band centered on the ecliptic, the yearly path of thesun among the stars (equivalent to the earth's yearly motion around the sun), is defined indifferent ways by different astrologers, but in a popular and ancient version, the zodiac is 17o

wide (or so) and is divided into 12 zones or "signs", named and symbolized according toconstellations found in them. Ancient Egyptian astrologers used 36 decans of 10o each rather than12 sections of 30o each, each assigned a name and symbol. Versions of these were used bynumerous astrologers during the Middle Ages and later, but appear to play only a small role inpresent-day astrology.202 The "sun sign" of a person is the zone of the zodiac in which the sun islocated when a person is born, or in some systems, conceived. When someone is said to be a"Libra" or to have been born "with the sun in Libra", it means the sun was in the Libra zone of thezodiac when he or she was born. Similarly, each person has a moon sign, and since the positionsin the zodiac of all the known planets are customarily taken into consideration, one could alsospeak of a "Venus sign", "Mars sign", etc., although this isn't often done.

3. The ascendant of a person may be defined as the sign of the zodiac which was rising inthe east at the instant the person was born. This is determined by the daily motion of the stars inthe sky (equivalent to the earth's rotation on its axis). The sun sign and other planetary signs of aperson are determined by the year, month and day of birth, but for the ascendant one needs thehour and place (determined by latitude and longitude). Most astrologers have considered theascendant to be at least as important a determinant as the sun sign. Just as the zodiac is dividedinto 12 signs, the apparent daily movement of the stars is divided into 12 houses. There arenumerous ancient and modern ways of doing this. Each house is considered to govern a differentsector of human life. Usually the zones of the houses are identified by numbers, and in onemethod, these are assigned in the direction opposite to the movement of the stars, starting fromthe ascendant (more precisely, from the degree of the ecliptic which was rising at the instant ofbirth, which is a position in one of the signs of the zodiac).

2 0 2 Cf. Wilhelm Gundel , Dekane und Dekanstern, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sternbilder der Kulturv ·lker,1936.

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4. In relatively recent times, a circular diagram has been used to record this data, with thezodiac represented in a relatively narrow band between the outer circumference of the circle and thecircumference of an inner circle, and the houses represented as sectors of the inner circle. Thepositions of the planets are recorded in these sectors. Formerly (apparently into the 18th century),a square diagram was used, with the houses represented by triangles, 4 on the sides of an innersquare, and 8 upside down with respect to these, 2 for each side of an outer square. The positionsof the planets are recorded in the triangles. In either case, casting a horoscope consists ofdetermining and recording this data, and the resulting diagram is called a horoscope. Often certainangles, or approximate angles, which planets make with each other as views from earth are notedon horoscopes. These are called aspects, and they include conjunction, opposition, trine, squareor quartile, and sestile or sextile, corresponding to angles of separation of 0, 180, 90 and 60degrees. The calculations needed to cast a horoscope are fairly complicated, and numerousdifferent techniques have been proposed.

5. Besides the significance attached to planetary positions in zodiacal signs, to thepositions of planets in the houses, and to planetary aspects, there were a number of otherastrological interpretations. A number of the these are summarized by J. D. North in his study of theextensive role of astronomy/astrology in the works of Chaucer203

6 . The planets themselves are assigned various characteristics, regardless of theirpositions in the sky. Saturn, for example, is on the whole intrinsically evil, and detaileddescriptions of its (or his) particular evils are given. The Sun is associated with brightness,intelligence, understanding, etc. And so on. The zodiacal signs and constellations whichdetermine them are also assigned various characterics of their own. Besides these intrinsic oressential properties of planets and signs, there are additional accidental properties of the planets(besides the signs, houses and aspects), due to their positions. For example, there are the fivedignities, namely: domiciles, exaltations, triplicities, terms and faces. These dignities, which areof Hellenistic origin or earlier, are explained by the Arabian astrologer Alkabucius in a treatisewidely used in the Middle Ages and later. 2 0 4

7. A domicile (or domus) of a planet is a sign of the zodiac regarded as a home for aplanet. The domiciles of Mercury, for example, are Gemini and Virgo, with Gemini being thegaudium of Mercury, the sign in which it "rejoices". Two planets have only one domicile --thereare 12 signs and 7 planets. A sign opposite to a domicile of a planet is a detriment, which isespecially alien to the planet. An exaltation is a sign in which a planet is especially powerful. Asign opposite to an exaltation is a dejection. A triplicity is a triple of signs forming an equilateraltriangle in a horoscopic diagram. The terms arise from a subdivision of each zodiacal sign into fiveunequal parts, and the faces from a subdivision of each zodiacal sign into ten equal parts (so theecliptic is subdivided into 360 parts, the number of days in an ancient Egyptian year). The facesderive from the ancient Egyptian decans. Three different ways of determining the terms are givenby Ptolemy, two which he identifies as Egyptian and Chaldean, and one of his own.

2 0 3 J. D. North, Chaucer's Universe (1988); Chapter 5, "Some Generall Rewles of Theorike in Astrologie".204Alkabucius (al- Qabisi; fl. 950 A.D.), Introductorium ad scienciam astrologiejudicialis.

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8. In addition to these dignities, there were the notions of hyleg (pronounced "high-ledge") and alcochoden (or alchocoden), to be used in determining how long a person could beexpected to live. The hyleg was one of four specific places in the ecliptic assigned to a person on thebasis of his natal horoscope by means of complicated and inscrutable rules. The alcochoden wasthe planet which had most dignity in the place of the hyleg. There was also an elaborate system oflunar mansions, arising from a subdivision of the ecliptic into 27 or 28 equal parts --the mansions-- corresponding to the number of days in a lunar month (about 27 and a half solar days). Themoon's status (waxing, waning, full, new, etc.) in each mansion, and its position in the zodiac,were all involved.

9. There is more. But this should be enough to show how complex and intricate adiscipline astrology can be. The assignment of positions of planets and houses and aspects inhoroscopes is a kind of applied observational astronomy, in the modern sense of the word"astronomy". An interpretation of these positions is the special province of astrology. A basicassumption of astrologers is that the planets exert influences on characters and fates ofindividuals. The positions of the sun, moon and other planets at birth indicate determininginfluences. Each of the houses in a person's horoscope is taken to govern some department oflife. The various dignities and virtues and powers of the planets are taken into consideration.The aspects are good or bad indicators, depending on which approximate angle and whichplanets are involved.

10. On the basis of birth horoscopes, astrologers make determinations of both thecharacters and the fates of individuals. In addition to these nativities, there are also hour or horaryhoroscopes, which are cast to show the positions of the planets at a given time so they can be usedto answer questions about what will happen after that time. These can be correlated in variousways with the birth horoscopes of questioners. The result can be used for determining predictions,or "elections", which are courses of action or non-action which questioners are advised to follow,or "interrogations", in which the answers to specific questions of many kinds are obtained. And soon. Horoscopic astrology is a complicated subject.

11. Judicial astrology is used not only to predict the future, but also to read character.Seyyed Hossein Nasr, speaking from the standpoint of modern Islam, says: "Human types canalso be divided astrologically, here astrology being understood in its cosmological and symbolicrather than its predictive sense. Astrological classifications, which are in fact related totraditional medical and physical typologies, concern the cosmic correspondences of the variousaspects of the human soul and unveil the refraction of the archetype of man in the cosmic mirror insuch a way as to bring out the diversity of this refraction with reference to the qualitiesassociated with the zodiacal signs and the planets. Traditional astrology, in a sense, concernsman on the angelic level of his being but also unveils, if understood in its symbolic significance, atypology of man which reveals yet another facet of the differentiation of the human species. Thecorrespondence between various parts of the body as well as man's mental powers to astrologicalsigns and the intricate rapport created between the motion of the heavens, various "aspects" andrelations between planets and human activity are also a means of portraying the inward link thatbinds man as the microcosm to the cosmos."205

2 0 5 Seyyed Hossein Nas r , Knowledge and the Sacred , 1981, p . 178 - 179 .

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12. An essence of some people's reaction to judicial astrology, particularly in the face ofits complexity, is captured by Stephen Leacock: "I was born at Swanmoor, Hants, England, onDecember 30, 1869. I am not aware that there was any particular conjunction of the planets at thetime, but should think it extremely likely."206

13. I have two pieces of antique computer software called LodeStar and HoroScopics,put out for astronomical hobbyists by a company called Zephyr Services.207 The Lodestarprogram will show a diagram of the sky for any date from 9999 BC to 9999 AD, giving thelocations of over 9000 stars, planets and galaxies, and the sun and moon. The HoroScopicsprogram will give a birth horoscope, with houses and aspects. I don't have the source code forthese programs, but it appears that the HoroScopics program consists basically of part of thecomputer code for the LodeStar program extended by some code which graphs a horoscopeinstead of a diagram of the sky, and which assigns interpretations to classes of positions of thebasic planets of astrology (including the sun and moon). Naturally, only a part of the code forLodeStar is needed for HoroScopics, since the influence of only a few celestial objects areneeded for casting horoscopes. This illustrates rather vividly how astronomy, as we nowunderstand it, is fundamental to astrology, but is nowadays quite sharply separable from it.

14. The sun, moon and planet signs are different for different people on account of thesun's motions through the zodiac, which are equivalent to the earth's approximately elliptical(nearly circular) revolutions around the sun. The astrological houses are different for differentpersons on account of the daily motions of the heavens, equivalent to the earth's rotations on itsaxis. There is another motion of the earth, the precession of the equinoxes, equivalent to arevolution in a circle of the earth's axis around a central line, a so-called "wobble", so that thepositions of the axis trace out a right circular cone. This causes observers on earth to see amovement with respect to the constellations in the zodiac of the places where the ecliptic, thecentral circle of the zodiac and apparent path of the sun through the sky, crosses the celestialequator, which is the imaginary extension of the earth's equator into the heavens. These twoplaces are called the spring and autumn equinoxes, and their motion is called the precession ofthe equinoxes. The precession is slow compared to human lifetimes, taking about 25920 yearsfor a complete circuit. Taking this motion of the earth -- or the heavens as viewed from earth --into account has caused many serious astrologers considerable trouble.

15. The precession of the equinoxes may seem to moderns to be something of interestonly to astronomers and perhaps people concerned with long range calendars. However, there isevidence that when it was first discovered, it had a powerful effect on some people. There was areligion in the ancient Roman world known as Mithraism which has often attracted historiansbecause, among other things, it was one of Christianity's major competitors in the Roman Empire.Ernest Renan once declared that "if Christianity had been stopped at its birth by some mortalillness, the world would have become Mithraic."208 Mithraism was one of the mystery or secretreligions, and has been difficult to interpret. For some 75 years or so, the dominant interpretationwas that of Franz Cumont, who traced it to a Roman importation of an Iranian (Persian) cultbased a god Mithra. This interpretation has come into question. It seems now that

206 Stephen Leacock, preface to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, 1912, p. vii.207 On 5 1/4" floppies, if you remember those.208 Ernest Renan, Marc-Aur©le et lafin du monde antique, 1923, p. 579.

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the Roman god Mithras may have corresponded to the Iranian god Mithra in name only, and thatIranian names and details were attached to Mithraism chiefly to give it an exotic and esotericcoloring. David Ulansey has proposed that the Mithraic religion originated in an interpretation ofthe discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus about 128B.C.E.209

16. A prominent characteristic of the Mithraic religion is its basic symbol of a man killing abull. Roughly speaking, this symbol is to Mithraism what the cross is to Christianity. The symbolnormally contains other items besides Mithras and a bull -- a scorpion, a dog, a snake, a raven, alion and a cup. In 1869, a German scholar named K. B. Stark suggested that the symbol could beinterpreted as a star map, with Mithras being identified with the constellation named after Perseus-- who was commonly associated with Persia -- and the bull being identified with the constellationTaurus (which, of course, means "bull"). This interpretation was not accepted by Cumont, butvarious scholars have recently revived it. What the killing of the bull signifies, according toUlansey, is the heliacal setting of Taurus (last day it is visible on the horizon just after sunset),symbolized as a killing of Taurus by the constellation just above it -- Perseus, or Mithras. Thishad been for some hundreds of years before the discovery of the precession been associated withthe spring equinox which occurred about the same time, although by the time of Hipparchus theheliacal setting of Taurus was occurring later than the spring equinox by a couple of weeks.

17. How could the discovery of precession have had such a powerful effect? As viewedfrom earth, regarded as fixed by most ancient astronomers, the precession of the equinoxes can betaken as evidence for a gradual rotation of the entire heavens, as the equinoctial points slowly movealong the celestial equator. Only a very powerful god could move the entire heavens. Ulanseysays: "I have argued that Mithraic iconography was a cosmological code created by a circle ofreligious-minded philosophers and scientists to symbolize their possession of secret knowledge:namely, the knowledge of a newly discovered god so powerful that the entire cosmos wascompletely under his control. It is not difficult to understand how such knowledge could havecome to form the core of an authentic religious movement. For the possession of carefully guardedsecret knowledge concerning such a mighty divinity would naturally have been experienced asassuring privileged access to the favors which this god could grant, such as deliverance from theforces of fate residing in the stars and protection for the soul after death during its journeythrough the planetary spheres. If we understand salvation to be a divinely bestowed promise ofsafety in the deepest sense, both during life and after death, then the god whose presence we havediscerned beneath the veils of Mithraic iconography was well suited to perform the role ofsavior."210 From this beginning, Mithraism evolved into a religion based on an ideology of powerand hierarchy, especially attractive to the military and militant.

18. The place of horoscopic astrology in the past is difficult to understand for a 20thcentury reader whose knowledge of this kind of astrology is chiefly based on newspaper andmagazine articles dealing only with sun signs. The system seems too simple for anyone to havetaken seriously. But in fact serious casters of horoscopes both past and present base theircharacter analysis and forecasting on more complex considerations, as the above sketch shows.

209 David Ulansey, The Origins of theMithraic Mysteries, Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World,

1989.

210 Ulansey, ibid . , p . 125.

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Furthermore, their methods are based not only on astronomical observations but on informationand proposed correlations gathered over long periods of time. Thus astrology has many of thecharacteristics of a science, and has been taken by numerous intelligent and thoughtful people to bea science, according to their definitions of "science" (or a natural philosophy in earlier times).

19. In understanding the place of astrology in the past, it has been thought useful for a longtime to distinguish between judicial astrology, as we have just described it, and natural astrology.Hugh Dick says: "The chief source of confusion in virtually all modern discussions of the place ofastrology [during the Renaissance] has arisen from the failure to define terms and to distinguishbetween the various kinds of belief. During the Renaissance, the two basic divisions of the pseudoscience were natural and judicial astrology. According to the doctrines of the former, the heavenlybodies exercised certain powers upon the earth, but not all these were what we should call occult.To believe that the sun gives heat and the moon affects tides was to accept the teachings ofnatural astrology, though before the conception of the macro-microcosm was destroyed mostbelievers went further than this. Judicial astrology, on the other hand, concerned not merely theinfluence of the stars but also the prognostication of events or tendencies through knowledgegained by this study."211

20. Dick quotes John Ferne, a writer on heraldry who conveyed conventional ideas on thesubject: "The third of the Mathematicals is Astronomy or Astrologie... Astronomy (as I have beentaught) comprehendeth the revolution of the Heavens, the rising, going downe, and motion ofStarres. But Astrologie is divided into two members, the one is called naturall, and the othersuperstitious [i.e., judicial]. That part which is naturall, noteth the stations of times, the courses ofthe Moone and Starres, but that which is called superstitious ... teacheth, by the judicials of theStarres and heavenly bodies, to give a prediction of seasons of the yeere, of nativities, and themanners of men: of fates, and fortunes future, to kingdomes, provinces, and townes, to the statesand conditions of people."2 12

21. Dick notes that the doctrines of the two branches of astrology overlapped, and that it isnot always easy to draw a line of demarcation between them, yet he says that to men of the timethe dichotomy was apparent. This may be so, but the distinction needn't have been of much helpin deciding what should part of astrology should be rejected. It wasn't possible to simply acceptall natural astrology and reject all judicial astrology. For example, according to the doctrines ofnatural astrology, the heavenly bodies exercise certain powers on the earth and its inhabitants.These included the sun's heating and the moon's action on bodies of water, along with influences wenow longer allow, such as certain actions on the human body which physicians had to take intoaccount. Now, to say that the sun heats us seems unobjectionable by any criterion. Can we makereliable predictions about the sun's heating? Yes, we can. Not as reliable as we would like, butpredictions of temperature changes and precipitation as made in today's weather reports are a usefulguide. Physicists and cosmologists also make long range predictions about the sun's heating, onthe basis of thermodynamics and the evolution of stars. As to the moon's influence,

2 1 1 From the Introduction by Hugh G. Dick to Albumazar: A Comedy (1615) by Thomas Tomkis, edited by Dick,1944, p. 18-19.212John Ferne, The Blazon of Gentrie, 1586, quoted by Hugh Dick, loc. cit., p. 19; I have modernized some thoughnot all spellings.

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predictions of low and high tides can be found today in newspapers and television weatherreports.

22. In these two prototypical cases, the natural and judicial components are intertwined,and both can claim successes. We no longer say that weather and tide predictions are applicationsof astrology, but this is what they were taken to be by most people during the Renaissance.Alleged planetary influences on the fates and fortunes of individuals, and the special branch ofjudicial astrology concerned with the casting of horoscopes, have not been verified in this way.This seems to be true even in the case of the reformed astrology based on planetary aspects, asrecommended by Kepler, although, as noted earlier, the results of Michel Gauquelin in relativelyrecent years raised some questions about the total failure of this kind of astrology. In this case,the underlying planetary influence, the natural astrology component, has not been found, nor havethe predictions, the judicial component, been very successful. In the case of the sun's heat and themoon's tides, the influences, the natural component, are granted today in the form of gravitation,and meteorological and nuclear processes, and the predictions, the judicial component, are madeusing mathematics as well as elaborate observations.

23. Corresponding to the distinction between judicial and natural astrology, a more generaldistinction can be made between magical and naturalistic beliefs. William Hine has argued that instudying magical and astrological beliefs in the 17th century, and how they may have arisen out ofRenaissance ideas, we should make a distinction between magic proper, as dealt with by certainprominent Renaissance figures, and a Renaissance naturalism independent of magic, which is notyet the naturalism of Galileo or Francis Bacon. Hine bases his argument on work of MarinMersenne (1588-1648), a prominent scientist and churchman, friend of Descartes, who maintaineda wide correspondence with other scientists of his time. In his Quaestiones celeberrime inGenesim, 1623, Mersenne distinguishes between magicians and atheists, the latter corresponding toRenaissance naturalists who were not magicians. The naturalists or atheists deny God's role in theworld and "attribute everything to nature alone", while the magicians "worship demons" andattribute many activities to evils. On the one hand, Mersenne was concerned to limit the claims ofmagicians without undermining the authenticity of Christian miracles, which he felt were aguarantee of the authenticity of Christianity itself. On the other hand, he was concerned to showthat the atheists were wrong to try to explain everything by nature alone, since, among otherthings, the Christian miracles are authentic, in his view.

24. As an example, Mersenne analyzes the work of Giulio Cesare Vanini who had beenconvicted of atheism and burned at the stake in Toulouse. Mersenne felt that the execution ofVanini was justifiable because Vanini would not acknowledge the existence of God, nor of angelsand demons. He "attributed all things to fate, and adored Nature as the bounteous mother andsource of all being." Vanini claimed there were people who had a natural power to cure diseases,analogous to magnetism. Magicians also drew analogies with magnetism, but related their powersto the influence of angels and demons, or heavenly influences of an astrological nature. Thus,Hines concludes, "it may well be that later scientists such as Newton, for example,

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saw in attraction a representation not of a hidden magical power, but of an occult, naturalpower."213

25. As to the place of astrology in this classification, Hine says: "For both naturalists andmagicians the stars played a significant role in influencing the terrestrial world. For the former,however, the influence of the stars amounted to a form of determinism, providing a source andguarantee of regularity and order in the universe .... In contrast to the naturalist view, whichemphasized natural law and ran the risk of determinism, magic was based on a certain conceptionof human freedom .... In magic the question is not whether man's destiny is determined for him byhis stars, but whether he can discover the stellar influences on his life and take steps to counteractthem, if necessary, or direct them for his own benefit." 214 Mersenne mounted a considerableattack on astrology in his Quaestiones celeberrime in Genesim.

26. There was during the European Renaissance a kind of flowering of astrology. WayneShumaker describes some of the most notable writings on astrology and magic during this era.215 Hegives, for example, an analysis of the influential work by the physician Marsilio Ficino, De vitacoelitus comparanda, 1489 (On Guiding One's Life by the Stars, or perhaps On Obtaining Lifefrom the Heavens; third part of De vita triplici). Ficino, like all physicians of his time, was versedin astrology, and this work, by a physician for physicians, is saturated with astrological lore. Forexample, Ficino describes "how tones, or compositions of tones, can be discovered which belongto specific heavenly bodies. The method requires, first, that we find out the power or effects of astar, a constellation, or even an aspect and what things are repelled by it, or attracted. The nextstep is to consider what star dominates what place and what men, and to observe the tones andsongs used there so that you will be able to use the same ones and the meanings implicit withinthem Finally, we must study the daily positions and aspects of the stars, and, under these, findout the speeches, songs, motions, and leapings (saltus), together with the customs and actions, towhich men are moved by them so that we may be able to imitate these in the songs which we willaddress to a given part of the sky." 216 And: "The occult virtues of things have not an elementalsource but a celestial one. Stellar and planetary rays are alive; they shine, as it were, from theeyes of living bodies, and offer wonderful gifts from the imaginations and minds of celestialbeings."217 Nevertheless, Ficino was not an astrological fundamentalist, and in his later writingspointed up a number of deficiencies in the astrological practices of his time. Don Allen Cameronremarks that Ficino said in later life "that he has no patience with those who trust the stars insteadof God, but in some forms of business it is wise to consult the heavens."218

27. Ernst Cassirer describes the work of Pietro Pomponazzi on fate, free will andpredestination, Defato, libero arbitrio etpraedestinatione (1520): [For Pomponazzi] divine

213 William L. Hine, "Mersenne: naturalism and magic", in Occult and scientific mentalities in theRenaissance, 1984, edited by Brian Vickers, p. 165-176.214 Hine, ibid., p. 168.215 Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance, A Study in Intellectual Patterns, 1972.216 Shumaker, ibid., p. 133.217 Shumaker, ibid.,, p. 129

218 Don Cameron Allen, The Star- Crossed Renaissance, The Quarrel about Astrology and Its Influence inEngland, 1941,p. 11.

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foreknowledge does not necessarily conflict with the freedom of human action .... Man grasps thepast and present according to its 'that', but grasps the future only according to his knowledge of the'why', because the future is not immediately given to him, but is rather only deducible through itscauses. But this difference between an immediate and mediate, between given and deducedknowledge, is not valid for divine knowledge. For in divine knowledge all temporal differences,so necessary for our conception of the world, disappear. To know the future divine knowledgeneeds no mediation, no discursive succession of the conditions by virtue of which the future comesto be."

28. As to another problem, that of "the compatibility of divine omnipotence with humanfreedom and responsibility", Cassirer says of Pompanazzi: "Although he does not quite dare toexpress himself unambiguously on this point, Pomponazzi's judgment tends unmistakably towardsa strict determinism. In his work on natural philosophy, De naturalium efectuum admirandorumcausis, the causality of events is interpreted in a strictly astrological sense. The world of historyand the world of nature are both viewed as necessary results of the influence of the heavenlybodies. And elsewhere too, whenever he is speaking freely, Pomponazzi considers Fate in theStoic sense the relatively most satisfactory and rational solution. What makes the acceptance ofthis solution difficult are not so much logical as ethical objections. A substantial part of the workis dedicated to the removal of these objections [W]ith an energetic blow, Pomponazzisevers the bond that had hitherto conjoined metaphysics and ethics. In principle, each iscompletely independent of the other. Our judgment concerning the value of human life is notdependent on our ideas concerning the continuation of life or the immortality of the human soul;and similarly the question of the value or non-value of our actions must be considered from a pointof view other than what caused these actions. No matter how we may decide this latter question,the ethical-practical judgment remains free. This freedom is what we need, not some chimericalcauselessness."219

29. Eugenio Garin says that Pomponazzi had "no doubts concerning the celestialconnection, and therefore the determination on the part of the stars, of all human events."Pompanazzi believed that the whole world rises and falls in successive cycles. Pomponazzi saysin Defato: "And as we see that the earth which is now fertile will be barren, and the great and therich will become humble and wretched, so the course of history is determined. We have seen theGreeks dominate the Barbarians, now the Barbarians dominate the Greeks, and so everything goeson and changes. So it is probable that he who is now a king will one day be a slave, and viceversa If then someone asks you, what kind of game is this? You would be well advised toreply that it is the game of God." Garin says: "Having established this eternal and universalvicissitude of things, this perennial cycle of ascent and descent, the revival of astrology with allits great themes follows logically from it." But Pomponazzi separated astrology and magic fromthe supernatural. "What matters to Pomponazzi," Garin says, is to bring every apparentlyabnormal phenomenon back into the sphere of rational interpretation and natural causes. Notdemons nor miracles, but nervous tension, force of the imagination, powers and qualities which

2 1 9 Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, 1963, p. 82-83 of the translation byMario Domandi of Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, 1927.

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are occult not because they are supernatural but because they have not yet been understood: theseare the causes of miraculous events."220

30. The most elaborate and famous of the Renaissance compendia of magic is no doubt theDe occultaphilosophia libri tres (1531) of Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim. Shumakerdescribes the contents of the first of these three books, which is concerned with "natural magic": "Itdiscusses the elements; the occult virtues in things; sympathies and antipathies; the dominance ofsuperiora over inferiora; the powers and influences of the planets, the signs, and certain fixedstars; how to attract 'the divinities who rule the world, and their ministers the daemons'; poisons;fumigations; unguents and philters; rings; lights and colors; fascination; divination and auguries;presages and prodigies; geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy (one divinatory skillfor each of the elements); the revival of the dead; dreams; passions and their effects on the body;the virtues of words, including proper names; incantations and enchantments; the relations ofletters in several languages (Hebrew, 'Chaldaean,' Greek, and Latin) to signs and planets; andmuch else."

3 1 . The subject of numbers is brought up in the first book. Shumaker says that in Book I:"... we are informed that the order, the numbers, and the shapes of letters 'are not arranged bychance or accident (non fortuito, nec casu) or by the caprice of men, but are formed divinely, sothat they relate to and accord with the heavenly bodies, the divine bodies, and their virtues.' Of alllanguages Hebrew is sacratissima not only in its shapes (figuris) but also in its vowel points andaccents, ;as if consisting in matter, form, and spirit, having been produced in God's seat, which isHeaven, by the positions of the stars.' Briefly, the letters are not, as is understood today,conventional symbols chosen from an almost unlimited range of possibility but are sorepresentative of the actual structure of the universe, or its parts, that manipulations of them haveintrinsic power. The belief requires no explanation. It is still common among illiterate people andamong children, who, if told that 'eau' means 'water,' may say, 'But it's really 'water,' isn't it?' Withwhat degree of seriousness I do not know, C. S. Lewis plays with a similar idea in his cosmictrilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, in which the 'Old Solar'spoken beyond the sphere of the moon not merely expresses but contains the real nature of things.'The 22 Hebrew character "are like secrets or sacraments and are vehicles, as it were, of theirmaterial referenda and of the 'essences' and powers these contain For this reason Origenbelieved that Hebrew names lost their force when translated. 'Accordingly the twenty-two lettersare the basis of the world and of all the creatures which exist and are named by them.'" 2 2 1

32. Numerology is especially developed in the second of the three books of CorneliusAgrippa, which is concerned with "celestial magic". Numbers, Shumaker remarks, are the basis ofthe entire quadrivium of the universities: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music. (Thiscould be misleading, since astronomical theories and observations, geometric abstractions anddiagrams, and melodic and harmonious sounds are more basic than numbers in astronomy,geometry and music, respectively). And Book II of Agrippa's occult philosophy opens with apraise of mathematics and a claim that "everything which is done in terrestrial affairs by natural

220Pietro Pomponazzi, quoted by Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance, 1983, p. 98-101, translation of LoZodiaco della Vita, 1976.2 2 1 Shumaker, ibid., p. 135 -137.

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energies is accomplished, led, or governed by number, weight, measure, harmony, movement,and light."

33. The mathematics of Agrippa, like the mathematics of Fludd, is largely numerology.Shumaker reproduces a number of elaborate drawings by Fludd and others which illustrate suchmatters as cosmic harmonies and the relations of numbers to the heavens. An example ofAgrippa's numerology reproduced by Shumaker consists of a matrix called scala novenarii (thescale of nines) with 6 rows and 11 columns, showing significances of the number 9. We have suchthings as the names of God in 9 letters, the 9 choirs of angels and 9 angels who preside overheaven, the 9 moving sphers, the 9 orders of bad daemons, and so on. Many numbers areconsidered by Agrippa. We learn, for example, that "the human foetus becomes a perfect body,ready to receive a reasonable soul, on the fortieth day; women require forty days to recover from abirth; an infant does not smile for forty days; Christ preached forty months, was in the tomb fortyhours, mounted into the sky forty hours after his Resurrection." There is a consideration of"geometrical figures, musical and other sounds, and similar harmonies and proportions in thehuman body and soul." We find that the geometrical figures "have no less power than the numbersthemselves." The pentagram, which has five acute and five obtuse angles, along with fivetriangles, has all the qualities of the number five, and has wonderful force against demons. Otherregular polygons have other qualities and virtues. We hear again about celestial harmonies, andhow the "proportions, measure, and harmony of the human body resemble those of the universe.""Every part or member of man," we are told, "corresponds to 'some sign, some star, someintelligence, some divine name."222

34. Book III of Agrippa's Occultaphilosophia is concerned with "religious magic". There isan extensive treatment of the names of God and their use in magic, along cabalistic lines. God'smembers are discussed, and God's ministers: spirits, daemons, and angels, including those whichgovern the signs, stars, winds, the 4 elements, and those formerly called fauns, satyrs, Pans,nymphs, naiads, nereids, dryads, muses, genii, and lemurs. The names of these spirits anddaemons are elaborated upon. There are instructions for attracting good daemons and repellingbad ones. There is material on the divinity of kings, princes, and pontiffs; how the seven planets actas instruments for bestowing virtues on man; why man has mastery over all other living creatures;and how to carry out various purifications, expiations, adorations, vows, sacrifices and oblations.

35. It should not be thought that astrology enchanted all scholars during the Renaissance.Shumaker analyzes the refutation of astrology, Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem ofGiovanni Pico della Mirandola (1495 -- Agrippa's Occultaphilosophia was 1531). Pico seems tohave started as a believer in magic who was working toward a summa of the kind achieved byCornelius Agrippa. But Pico underwent a passionate about-face. A story was told by TychoBrahe, the astronomer and mentor of Kepler, that Pico was moved to his attack on astrology whenthree Italian astrologers predicted his death at a certain time in his 33rd year. According to Brahe,the prediction came true even though Pico shut himself up in his room when the time approached.However, Shumaker says that Pico actually died at age 31. Another possible motive for the attackis Pico's admiration for Savonarola, who regarded astrology as a superstition unworthy ofChristians.

2 2 2 Shumaker , ib id. , p . 137 -146.

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36. Pico's treatise is long, and is characterized by Shumaker as being full and well-informed. Its gist is summarized by Shumaker: "For a cosmic universe which was conceivedanimistically, in which planets 'rejoiced' and were 'dejected,' 'looked at' each other with friendlyor unfriendly feeling, and varied from 'benevolence' to 'malevolence' in their attitudes towardmen, Pico wanted to substitute one in which the heavenly bodies performed quite dispassionatelyand without consciousness roles assigned them at the beginning by a Creator-God who allowedthe evil initiated by men to cause suffering but did not place in the skies forces which woulddispose them to act well or badly As an example let us take Aristotle. His soul did not comefrom the stars because, as he himself proved, it was immortal and incorporeal. His body, fit toserve his soul, did not come from the sky ... but from his parents. As a result of the power ofchoice inherent in his mind and body he elected to philosophize. His progress came from his planand his industry, and that it was especially great was a consequence of his teacher's doctrine and thegood fortune of his age, when a good beginning had been made and materials were at hand tobring philosophy to perfection. He was superior to his disciples because he had not a better starbut a greater genius, the source of which was God. Similarly, the greatest of all philosophers,Socrates, ascribed his wisdom not to the luminaries but to a god or daemon who kept himcompany."223

37. However, Thorndike says of Pico that his work against astrology on the whole "isrambling and ineffective as far as orderly presentation and cumulative argument are concerned."Furthermore, Thorndike says of the first part: "This effort to give the impression that most of thegreat minds of the past have condemned astrology is weak and unconvincing to anyone at allacquainted with the past history of the subject. Pico selects only those persons and data thatsupport his contention, suppressing the evidence to the contrary, or misrepresents the attitude ofother personages On the whole, his citations are about as unconvincing as those of theastrologers in favor of their art. He had a wide, if not exhaustive, acquaintance with the pastliterature germane to his theme, but the use he makes of it is that of the advocate and dialecticaldisputant, almost at times that of invective, rather than that of the impartial historian of ideas." Ingeneral, according to Thorndike, "One cannot but feel that the importance of Pico della Mirandolain the history of thought has often been grossly exaggerated."224

38. Still, the historian Jacob Burckhardt called Pico's piece Oratio de hominis dignitate oneof the noblest bequests of the Renaissance. Here Pico speaks on the question of free will. Of God,he says: "He formed man according to a general image that contained no particularities, and, settinghim in the centre of the world, said to him: 'We have given you, Adam, no definite place, no formproper only to you, no special inheritance, so that you may have as your own whatever place,whatever form, whatever gifts you may choose, according to your wish and your judgment. Allother beings have received a rigidly determined nature, and will be compelled by us to followstrictly determined laws. You alone are bound by no limit, unless it be one prescribed by yourwill, which I have given you. I have placed you at the centre of the world, so that you may moreeasily look around you and see everything that is in it. I created you as a being neither heavenlynor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so that you may freely make and master yourself, and takeon any form you choose for yourself. You can degenerate to animality

2 2 3 Shumaker, ibid., p. 16-27.224Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923-1958, v. IV, 1934, p. 532, 529-530, 485.

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or be reborn towards divinity ...... Animals bring forth ... from the bodies of their motherseverything they ought to have. The higher spirits are, from the beginning or soon afterwards,everything they will be for eternity. But on man, the Father conferred, at the moment of birth, theseeds and germ of every form of life. Those which he cultivates will grow in him and bear fruit.If they are the plant seeds, he will vegetate; if he follows the senses, he will become an animal; ifhe cultivates the power of reason within him, he will become a celestial creature; if he followsintelligence, he will become an angel and a son of God.'"225

39. Here Pico attributes magical powers to man. Only man has no strictly determinednature and is subject to no strictly deterministic laws, contrary to what some Stoics andastrologers have claimed. A person can do anything he or she wants to. This illustrates afundamental distinction between astrology and magic, or astrology and other kinds of magic.Magic, generally speaking, concentrates on giving power and understanding to people, aimswhich magic shares with science. Astrology seeks to understand certain powers of nature overpeople, so they can accommodate to it, or take steps to deal with it. No astrologer or astronomerundertakes to change the stars.

40. Despite the refutations of Pico della Mirandola and others, people continued to putstock in astrology. Shumaker quotes Paul Kocher226 who observed that "of the six full-scalepolemics published in England against astrology in the Elizabethan age, five -- those by WilliamFulke, John Calvin, William Perkins, John Chamber, and George Carleton -- came fromecclesiastics."227 In addition to these, Dick lists Thomas Cranmer, James Pilkington, RogerHutchinson, and Andrew Willett and remarks that he could give many more. (Dick, loc. cit., p.23-25.) Furthermore, the State issued various proclamations and statutes against sorcery, taken toinclude astrological prediction. It was recognized that such prognostications could be a cause ofdisorder in the Commonwealth. In the same treatise in which he revealed his belief in witches,his Daemonolgies in Forme of a Dialogue (1597), King James attacked judicial astrology.

41. But after discussing opposition to astrology, Kocher goes on: "And who, on the otherside, spoke up for astrology? To the bewilderment of the modern analyst, chiefly the foremostscientific men of the age ... an almost solid front of physicians, astronomers, and other naturalphilosophers, renowned for their achievements." This seems to be overstated, since many of thenatural philosophers were skeptical about various kinds of astrology, and tended only to thinkthere was something in it. This too is understandable, since scientists took it that there are lawswhich are independent of human will, and of chance. "Were a choice necessary," Shumaker says,"causation might, after all, be better laid to physical rays emanating from planets and stars, whichat least were subject to observation, than to mystical numbers, cabalistic verbal formulas, anddevils."228 Physicians in those days were especially prone to accept astrological theories. Theywere a part of their standard repertoire.

225Pico della Mirandola, quoted by Ernst Cassirer in The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy(1927, 1963), p. 85-86.226 Paul Kocher, Science and Religion in Elizabethan England, 1953.227 Kocher, p.202; the work by Carleton is called Astrologomania: The Madnesse of Astrologers, 1624.

228 Kocher, ibid., p. 54.)

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42. Keith Thomas discusses the practice, role and relations with religion of astrology inEngland in the 16th and 17th centuries. In connection with religion, he says: "Committed to thebelief that the will was necessarily free, the clergy therefore reasoned that it was impossible topredict future human behaviour. If the astrologers did so, it could only mean that they were inleague with the Devil. Charms and spells, said Bishop Carleton [in 1624], were the Devil'srudiments, but judicial astrology was the Devil's university. Astrologers in tacit league with Satandeserved the fate prescribed for every other kind of witch. They were also suspect because of theirmathematical calculations. The memory of Roger Bacon had been much besmirched by theassumption that mathematics was part of the black art, and it was notorious that the Edwardianreformers had destroyed mathematical books at Oxford under the delusion that they wereconjuring books. 'Where a red letter or a mathematical diagram appeared, they were sufficient toentitled the book to be Popish or diabolical.' (This may account for the disappearance at thisperiod of nearly all the works of the fourteenth-century Merton College school of astronomers.)"

4 3 . "Modern historians tend to think that few genuine Elizabethan scientists were liable tobe accused of witchcraft. Yet both John Dee and Thomas Hariot suffered from such suspicionsand in the seventeenth century John Aubrey recalled how the Elizabethan astrologer, ThomasAllen, was maligned by the belief, 'in those dark times', that astrologer, mathematician andconjurer were all the same thing. During the reign of Mary, a clergyman, William Living, wasarrested by an ignorant constable who found among his books a copy of the astronomicaltextbook, John de Sacrobosco's Sphere, exclaiming, 'It is no marvel the Queen be sick, seeingthere be such conjurers in privy corners; but now, I trust, he shall conjure no more.' TheElizabethan surveyor, Edward Worsop, also commented on the popular assumption that bookswith crosses, circles and Greek geometrical terms were likely to be works of conjuration. Suchprejudices lasted well into the seventeenth century, and were fanned by the widespreadconviction that anything mysterious must have a diabolical origin The sequestrators whoseized the papers of the mathematician Walter Warner in 1644 were reported to be 'muchtroubled at the sight of so many crosses and circles in the superstitious algebra and that black art ofgeometry.'" 2 2 9

44. Don Cameron Allen discusses many defenders and detractors of astrology in Europeduring the 250 years or so from about 1450 to 1700. Among the early works by writers in Italy,along with those of Ficino, who was rather ambiguous about the powers of astrology, and Picodella Mirandola, who made a thorough and influential attack on its powers (after having publisheda favorable description earlier), Allen analyzes the work of an early staunch defender, GiovanniPontano. In his Defortuna (1501), Pontano was much concerned with the relationship of chanceor fortune to stellar influences. He held that stellar influences incline us this or that way, but thatthey can be overcome, for example by prudence and reason. (This is a very old idea, going back atleast to Ptolemy of Alexandria).

45. Our fortune comes from the stars, but reason and prudence are sometimes useful inperfecting fortune. Allen says: "The arch stone of Pontano's theory is his notion of the fortunate.Nature, he says, begets certain men who are the children of fortune and others who are not. The

2 2 9 Kei th Th omas, Rel ig ion and the Decl ine o f Magic , 1971, p . 362 -363 .

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fortunate man, unlike the virtuous man, does not need to follow a code of conduct; he has only tofollow his natural impulses, and he will be carried to the highest goals. Pontano admits that hedoes not know why this is so; reason can no more explain it than it can explain why one man winsat dice and another man loses. The fortunate are like prophets, sybils, and poets; they are agitatedby a divine power. Reason and study have nothing to do with their successful careers; in fact, thefortunate often lose their occult power when they try to reason or begin to study."230 When alearned friar complained that Pontano had not given enough place to providence in his views,Pontano found an answer in the stars. "God, he says, created the stars and gave them power overeverything below save the wills of men; therefore, fate is a sort of partner of men's wills in thegoverning of earthly business."231

46. In England, the practice of astrology reached an apex of influence and respectabilityduring the Elizabethan and Stuart eras, that is, in the late 16th century and during the first threequarters or so of the 17th century, and yet at the same time came under attack from manyquarters. In his biography of William Lilly, the leading astrologer during the middle two quartersof the 17th century, Derek Parker uses Shakespeare as a source from which we can get an idea ofthe place of astrology in the minds of most English people during Elizabethan times. Shakespearemakes many allusions to astrology in his plays and sonnets. For example, in Julius Caesar, Cassiussays to Brutus:

Men at some time are masters of their fates.The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, Butin ourselves that we are underlings. 2 3 2

These lines, says Parker, have often been misunderstood. The meaning is that there are timeswhen men are best able to master their fates -- which a competent astrologer could calculate forthem -- and that a man is an underling if he doesn't act at a moment when the planetary positionsare propitious for him. To say that the fault is not in the stars of the conspirators is to say that theplanetary positions are propitious for the assassination of Caesar. There is something compellingabout this interpretation, given the context of the whole play, and it indicates a faith in astrology,together with a view that the stars incline but do not compel.233 Numerous other passages fromShakespeare's writings show a similar attitude toward astrology. Prospero, in The Tempest, says inthe manner of Cassius:

... by my prescienceIfind my zenith doth depend uponA most auspicious star, whose influence IfI now court not but omit, my fortunesWill ever after droop.234

2 3 0 Don Cameron Allen, The Star- Crossed Renaissance, The Quarrel About Astrology and Its Influencein England, p.42.2 3 1 Allen, ibid., p. 43.2 3 2 Julius Caesar , I.ii, 140-141.2 3 3 Derek Parker, Familiar to All, William Lilly and Astrology in the Seventeenth Century, 1975, p. 47-54.

2 3 4 The Tempest, I.ii, 180-184.

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One may take it that Shakespeare could expect such beliefs to be common in his audiences.

47. Parker cites a speech of Ulysses from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida as showing"more vividly than any other easily accessible quotation the Elizabethan vision of a parallelsystem of heavenly and earthly order, and ... of the palpable connection between them":

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,Observe degree, priority, and place,Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,Ofice, and custom, in all line of order: Andtherefore is the glorious planet Sol In nobleeminence enthron'd and spher'd Amidst theother; whose med'cinable eye Corrects the illaspects ofplanets evil,

And posts, like the commandment of a king,Sans check, to good and bad: but when the planets Inevil mixture, to disorder wander,

What plagues and what portents! what mutiny! Whatraging of the sea! shaking of earth! Commotion inthe winds!frights, changes, horrors, Divert andcrack, rend and deracinate The unity and marriedcalm of states Quite from their fixture! 2 3 5

2 3 5 The History of Troilus and Cressida, I, iii , 85- 10 1.

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Chapter 4. From Babylon to Copernicus

1. Among the most famous of past astrologers have been the Babylonians.236 The religionand science of the ancient Babylonians, especially of their soothsayers, worshippers of Bel(Marduk), were bound to the stars. There was much concern with the foretelling of humandestiny. The notion of a connection between astral bodies and human destinies appears to havebeen part of a central concept that the cosmos contains nothing fundamentally dead or inimical.The observations made by Babylonian astronomer-priests reflect a longing to establish preciselythe interdependence between stars and earth and man. S. Giedion says: "In an often retold dreamof that great figure of the early period, Gudea of Lugash, the goddess Nisibis appeared to him notonly as the goddess of intelligence, wisdom, mathematics, and writing; she also 'bore the tablet ofthe good star' -- in other words, she was simultaneously goddess of astrology."237

2. Édouard Dhorme says of the early Mesopotamians: "For the Sumerians and Akkadians,the sky was, in effect, a great map on which their destiny was inscribed. Men called theconstellations 'the writing of heaven' or 'the writing of the firmament'." The experience of the nightside of life, and the feeling of being utterly at the mercy of destiny, permeated Mesopotamianexistence. Later, the Greeks took over the idea of destiny, without being led into the deeppessimism already revealed in the depressing adventures of Gilgamesh, around 2600 B.C. Thisinterest in destiny was closely linked with a desire to fathom in advance the will of the gods. Thestars were identical with the deities. They influenced all happenings and were thus guides toman's fate. Everything depended on whether the initiate was able to read the decisions of the godsfrom the movements of the stars. It has not been clearly proven just when this sort of belief in thestars arose. But it must be closely linked with an anthropomorphization of the universe, and thusit must have found its form shortly before or at the beginnng of historical

times .... "238

3. The Mesopotamians built awe-inspiring structures called ziggurats, towers composedof series of terraces joined by steps, with temples on top, probably containing places for makingsacrifices. "Both ziggurat and pyramid derive their existence," says Giedion, "from man'sawakened urge toward the vertical as a symbol of contact with the deity, contact with the sky...The notion of a ladder between heaven and earth was marvelously portrayed."239 The tower ofBabel in the Bible is probably the great ziggurat at Babylon. The word "Babel" means "gate ofthe God" in Akkadian. There is a similar-sounding word in Hebrew which means "confusion."There appears to be a pun in the Biblical story of the tower of Babel.

4. Relatively late in their history, certain Babylonians were also pioneers in mathematicalastronomy. However, they made accurate celestial observations for a long time before theydeveloped their mathematical astronomy. Simplicius, for example, in his commentary onAristotle's De caelo (6th century C.E.) speaks of a sequence of observations sent

236 See Appendix to this Chapter for the description of Babylonian (Chaldean) astrologers by Diodorus ofSicily (100-30 B.C.E.), Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.), and Flavius Josephus (37-98 C.E.)237 S. Giedion, The Beginnings of Architecture, 1964, p. 9, 19, 138-139.238 ~douard Dhorme, Les Religions de Babylonie et d'Assyrie, 2nd edition, 1949, p. 282, p. 138-140.239 Dhorme, ibid., p. 219, 225.

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by Callisthenes to Aristotle (4th century B.C.E.) which had extended over 1903 years. 2 4 0 Wemay take with a grain of salt, Rutten says, the assertion of Iamblichus (c. 250-330 A.D.) that theBabylonians had observed the stars for 72,000 years.

5. Did the Babylonians' astronomy grow out of their astrology, or vice versa --or did theygrow up together? Otto Neugebauer says, comparing astronomy and astrology: "It has often beensaid that astronomy originated from astrology. I see no evidence for this theory The bestdescription of the true situation might be the statement that we know equally little about the originof astrology or astronomy and that the relative influence of these two disciplines on one another islargely a matter of conjecture."241

6. Rutten quotes Strabo, the geographer (c. 60 B.C.E.-20 C.E.): "There is in Babylonia acaste or colony of indigenous philosophers called "Chaldeans" who concern themselves chieflywith astronomy. Some also specialize in casting horoscopes, but they do not have the approval ofthe others."242 According to Rutten, this proves that alongside the astrologer-diviners there weretrue astronomers, in the modern sense of the word. Unfortunately, one can construe Strabo'sstatement to mean that some of the philosophers frowned on personal astrology concerningindividuals, as contrasted with omen astrology, concerning nations or peoples, or naturalphenomena.

7. Neugebauer saw no evidence that astronomy grew out of astrology, but ~douardDhorme did. He says: "It was inevitable that a close relationship be established betweenobservation of the stars and the calendar, which gives measurements of the celestial vault. Theastrologers were in this way led to study the lives of the gods not only in space, but also in time. Itwas necessary for them to take note of the celestial phenomena which gave to each day of themonth and of the year its peculiar physiognomy. The necessity of avoiding errors and giving amathematical precision to the results obtained quickly caused the synthesis of astrologicalobservations to be transformed into an exact science. In this way, astronomy detached itself fromastrology. The religious apparatus which surrounded the calculations of the diviners ended bypassing into the background. The divination tables were only empirical findings, but theycontinued to answer to the need of the human soul to probe into the darkness of the future.Astrology acquired a new expansive force by separating itself from its indigenous culture. It is inthis way that it penetrated into Asia Minor, in particular among the Hittites, and from there as faras Greece and Rome, where the Chaldeans distinguished themselves as drawers of horo scopesand fortune-tellers."243

8. Despite the fact that the Babylonian astrologer/ astronomers are customarily said tohave been priests (Herodotus called them this), some Babylonians may have taken a relativelysecular attitude toward the stars. A. Laurent says: "In Egypt, most of the books which treatedscience were considered sacred books, composed and revealed by the gods themselves. TheChaldeans, and later their disciples the Assyrians, attributed a less elevated origin to their similarbooks. For them, they were simply the fruit of the experience of educated men and of

240 Referred to by Marguerite Rutten in La Science des Chaldªens, 1970, p. 8 9-90.241 Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 1957, p. 168.242Rutten, ibid., p. 89.2 4 3 Dhorme, ibid., p. 288-289.

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generations of patient observers. In particular, the treatises on divination (astrology, the scienceof omens, haruspicy, etc.) appear to us, in fact, quite like the work of a number of scholars who,through the centuries, have recorded from day to day the relations which seemed to them to existbetween the events of political or private life and different sidereal or terrestrial phenomena.Neither the Chaldeans nor the Assyrians did anything to obscure the human origins of thesetreatises."244

9. Observations of the stars have long been connected with determination and maintenanceof calendars. Dhorme, speaking of this relation, attributes to the Babylonians a calendar having ayear of 12 months with 30 days each, plus a 5-day intercalary period. This calendar, however,appears to have originated with the Egyptians. Plutarch (c. 46-120 A.D.) says: "They say that theSun, when he became aware of Rhea's intercourse with Cronus, invoked a curse upon her that sheshould not give birth to a child in any month or any year; but Hermes, being enamoured of thegoddess, consorted with her. Later, playing at draughts with the moon, he won from her theseventieth part of her illumination, and from all the winnings he composed five days, andintercalated them as an addition to the three hundred and sixty days. The Egyptians even now callthese five days intercalated and celebrate them as the birthdays of the gods."245

10. Neugebauer says of the Egyptian calendar of 12 30-day months plus 5 intercalateddays that "this calendar is, indeed, the only intelligent calendar which ever existed in humanhistory."246 He thus goes further than Herodotus (c. 485-425 B.C.E.), who says that the priests ofEgypt with whom he talked "all agreed in saying that the Egyptians by their study of astronomydiscovered the solar year and were the first to divide it into twelve parts --and in my opinion theirmethod of calculation is better than the Greek; for the Greeks, to make the seasons work outproperly, intercalate a whole month every other year, while the Egyptians make the year consist oftwelve months of thirty days each and every year intercalate five additional days, and so completethe regular circle of the seasons."247 It may be that Dhorme confuses this Egyptian calendar withthe Babylonian lunar calendar in which some years have 12 months and others 13 months of 30days each. This was at first done irregularly, and later with 7 13-month years every 19 years 2 4 8

Such a 13th month of 30 days can be considered to be an intercalation. Dhorme, indeed, speaks ofintercalating a month of 30 days into a 12 month calendar of 30 days each.

11. Did the Sumerians already have astrology in early Mesopotamian culture? O. R.Gurney says: "The only clear evidence that the Sumerians already practised astrology comes fromthe cylinder of Gudea (c. 2 143-2124 BC). In his first dream this ruler saw the goddess Nisabastudying 'a tablet of the star (or stars) of heaven', which was interpreted to mean that she wasproclaiming 'the pure star for the building of the temple'. In what way the star was thought to givesuch a sign is not explained. From Mari, of the time of Hammurapi (c. 1780 BC), there is a letterfrom the barû [professional omen inspector, a priest] Asqudum, which is very revealing. Thediviner reports an eclipse of the moon; he knows that this is a bad omen, but no more,

244 A. Laurent, La Magie et la Divination chez les Chaldeo-Assyriens, 1894, p. 58.

245 Plutarch, "Isis and Osiris", in Plutarch's Moralia, translated by Frank Cole Babbitt, 1936, v. 5, p. 31.246 Otto Neugebauer, Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 1957, p. 81.247 Herodotus, The Histories, ii.4, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, 1954, p. 130.248 Neugebauer, ibid., p. 102.

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proceeds to check the findings by haruspicy, and declares that after all the outlook is favourable.Evidently at this time haruspicy was the only reliable form of divination...... It seems that it wasnot till much later that astrology rose to prominence as a rival to haruspicy. That it eventually didso is seen in some 600 reports on ominous events sent in to the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680-669 BC) from scholars posted in widely distributed centres throughout the empire. The greatmajority of these are astrological in character and are often in response to an enquiry from theking as to the meaning of an ominous event. Like the extispicy reports, they quote the relevantomens from the handbook, here complete with the prediction, and a conclusion is drawn regardingthe general significance of the omen for the king, but never in relation to a particular matter ofpolicy. Astrology could not be used, as extispicy was, to answer specific questions. The officialswho write these reports are not barû priests but scholars with various professional designations.One is called 'scribe of "When Anu and Enlil"'. A special title which does not occur elsewhere is'Chief of the team often'."

12. "Horoscopic astrology, the 12 signs of the zodiac, and the doctrine of the hypsomatawere a still later development. The earliest horoscope (now in Oxford) dates from 410 BC. Twoastrological manuals show drawings of the hypsomata, or positions of greatest astrologicalinfluence: the moon in Taurus, Jupiter in Cancer, Mercury in Virgo. They date from the Seleucidperiod (after 300 BC). The texts attached to these drawings have by now reached the refinementof dividing each sign of the zodiac into twelve 'microzodiacs' of 2 1/2 days each. Thissophisticated astrology, for which the 'Chaldeans' were renowned in the Roman world, was onlydeveloped after the fall of Babylon to the Persians in 539 BC."249

1 3 . Samuel Angus makes the claim that astrology made the Greek and Roman methodsof inquiry into the future antiquated. Augury and haruspicy were practically abandoned. Officialoracles, like the one at Delphi, though revived under the empire, had stiff competition, he says,from the Chaldaei and mathematici, as well as from Christian and Gnostic apocalypses. 2 5 0

14. Prominent Greek scientists such as the astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus (c.390-340 B.C.E.) and Theophrastus (c. 372-286 B.C.E.), student and successor of Aristotle,studied the star-worship and astrological practices of the Babylonians. According to Proclus (c.412-485 B.C.E.) in his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Theophrastus, in his book On Signs,credited the Chaldeans of his time with a theory with which they could predict "every event, and thelife and death of every person."251 Near the end of the 3rd century B.C.E., professional astrologersfrom Babylonia set up business among the Greeks. Michael Grant tells us: "The first of thesepractitioners was said to be the Babylonian priest Berossus, translator of The Eye of Bel, whomoved to Cos and founded an astrological school on the island (c. 280 [B.C.E.]). But it was not untilafter 200 that the movement reached the proportions of a flood. This was the time when Bolus ofMendes in Egypt (a country that had learnt its astrology from Mesopotamia) compiled a treatise OnSympathies andAntipathies which explained and justified the fictitious correspondence betweenheavenly bodies and human beings. His book became one of the most

249 O. R. Gurney, in Oracles and Divination, 1981, edited by Michael Loewe and Carmen Blacker, p. 160-162.

250 Samuel Angus, The Mystery-Religions and Christianity, A Study in the Religious Background ofEarly Christianity, 1925,p. 167.251 Pierre Duhem, Le Syst©me du Monde, 1913, v. 2, p. 275.

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influential best-sellers of all time. Another successful work was an astrological textbook,probably written c. 150-120, which went under the probably fictitious Egyptian names ofNechepso and Petosiris."252

15. These beliefs fit easily into Stoic doctrines, and the Stoics maintained astrologicaldoctrines from early on. It was, as we said earlier, an understandable outgrowth of dismay at aworld which seemed to be rules by chance and fickle fortune. One of the leaders of the Stoicschool, Diogenes 'the Babylonian' from Seleucia on the Tigris (d. 152 B.C.E.), maintained thatthe souls of men and women contain a spark of the power that rules the heavens. Grant says ofthis Diogenes: "Building on his forerunner Cleanthes' veneration of the sun and the celestialbodies, [he] became the traitor withing the gates who welcomed astrology for its apparentlyconvincing proof of this 'Sympathy of all Creation'." Another Stoic, Panaetius of Rhodes (c.185-109 B.C.E.) rejected the idea that the sun, moon and stars causally affect the affairs of theworld, although he was willing to accept the validity of divination. But soon afterwards aninfluential Stoic, Posidonius of Apamea in Syria (c. 135-50 B.C.E.), welcomed the basicastrological principles as keys to the harmony of the universe.

16. Some believers in such principles allowed a limited scope for free will, butnevertheless considered themselves to be ruled by the unchanging and inescapable heavenlyspheres, which predestine all that happens. Others revolted against a pitiless mechanicalinevitability and sought means to circumvent or reduce the oppressiveness of the astral powers.This required finding out what the powers had in store, and how to arrange one's activities toavoid their most hostile intentions. For this, experts were needed: professionalastrologer/astronomers. These became an influential group, who provided numberless believerswith a principal interest, consolation and excitement. They cast horoscopes, in which the futuredestiny of a person was worked out from the positions of heavenly bodies at the time of his orher birth. The astrologer/ astronomers not only prophesied future destinies, but also counseledpeople on how to outwit what had been destined. They mixed a kind of science with a kind ofmagic.

17. In science, as in religion, a kind of submission seems to be required to some degree towhat there is and must be, while with magic a there is customarily intent to dominate, tomanipulate the gods, or the way nature works, or to interfere with fate. With technology,including applications of science, we often try to manipulate nature. But with magic, we try tochange the will of the gods, or the laws of nature. Magic rests on the assumption that we are notunderlings in ways that science or religion profess. Not even the sky is the limit. Belief in thepower of magical manipulations was widespread in Hellenistic times. There were some whoinvestigated the laws by which the stars move, without trying to alter either the laws or the stars,but a man might be at the same time an astronomer and an astrologer, and maybe a magician, too.

18. The Babylonians were known to the Greeks and Romans not only as astrologers,astronomers and magicians, but as diviners by other methods. Writing about 161 or 162 C.E., thesatirist Lucian tells how Menippus makes a descent into Hades to find out the right way to live.He finds that the good life is not that of the rich and powerful, nor that of a philosopher,

2 5 2 Michael Grant , From Alexander to Cleopatra, TheHellenistic World, 1982, p . 214 -222 .

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but the ordinary life of one who lives in the present and laughs a lot. To make his descent intoHades, Menippus says: "... I resolved to go to Babylon and address myself to one of the Magi, thedisciples and successors of Zoroaster, as I had heard that with certain charms and ceremonialsthey could open the gates of Hades, taking down in safety anyone they would and guiding himback again ............................Well, springing to my feet, I made straight for Babylon as fast as Icould go. On my arrival, I conversed with one of the Chaldeans, a wise man of miraculous skill,with grey hair and a very majestic beard; his name was Mithrobarzanes. By dint of supplicationsand entreaties, I secured his reluctant consent to be my guide on the journey at whatever price hewould. So the man took me in charge, and first of all, for twenty-nine days [approximately a lunarmonth], beginning with the new moon, he took me down to the Euphrates in the early morningtoward sunrise, and bathed me; after which he would make a long address which I could not followvery well, for like an incompetent announcer at the games, he spoke rapidly and indistinctly. It islikely, however, that he was invoking certain spirits."

19. "Anyhow, after the incantation he would spit in my face thrice and then go back againwithout looking at anyone whom he met. We ate nuts, drank milk, mead, and the water of theCoaspes, and slept out of doors on the grass. When he considered the preliminary course ofdieting satisfactory, taking me to the Tigris river at midnight he purged me, cleansed me, andconsecrated me with torches and squills and many other things, murmuring his incantation as hedid so. Then after he had be charmed me from head to foot and walked all about me, that I might notbe harmed by phantoms, he took me home again, just as I was, walking backward. After that, wemade ready for the journey. He himself put on a magician's gown very like the Median dress, andspeedily costumed me in these things which you see -- the cap, the lion's skin, and the lyre besides;and he urged me, if anyone should ask my name, not to say Menippus, but Heracles or Odysseus orOrpheus."253

20. The ancient Chinese, on the whole, seem not to have become as secular-minded as theBabylonians about the stars. Edward Schafer says that for most early Chinese, even for the mostadvanced authorities, astronomy was indistinguishable from astrology. As understanding ofstellar motions was refined, and more and more aspects of the starry firmament were removedfrom the realm of conjecture, doubt and fear into the realm of the known and predictable, thisidentification remained. Comets, meteors and supernovae remained terrible signals from thepowers in space, and it would be wrong to suppose that the inclusion of quite reliableephemerides in a medieval Chinese almanac means that movements of celestial objects hadbecome accepted as merely physical transits of the sky. Schafer says: "There were certainlyskeptics, but it appears that most men, even well-educated men, continued to believe that apredictable Jupiter remained an awful Jupiter." Moreover, the Chinese devoted little energy tomaking geometrical models of the physical universe which would account for their observationsand arithmetical calculations. "Indeed," says Schafer, "cosmology languished close to theborderlands of mythology, and for many, perhaps most people, the two were identical." Theobliquity of the ecliptic, the precession of the equinoxes, and the true length of the tropical yearwere discovered quite early, but this didn't put the diviners out of work.254

253 Lucian, Lucian, v. 4, “Menippus”, translated by A. M. Harmon, 1925, p. 83-87.254 Edward Schafer, Pacing the Void, T'ang Approaches to the Stars, 1977, p. 9 -10.

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21. According to Schafer, a remarkable feature of T'ang astronomy/astrology was theextent of Indian influences on it. A similar condition prevailed centuries later, Schafer remarks,during the Mongol domination of China, when Islamic science prevailed in the office of theAstronomer Royal at Peking. Schafer says: "The extent of western influences on Chineseastronomical and cosmological thought in early antiquity is uncertain. Speculation on the matterhas in the past tended to resemble the lush growth of the hot-house or the tropical forest: junglytangles of colorful lianes and rattans whose stems are confused and whose roots are doubtful. Asober hypothesis by a professional Assyriologist of our own century [E. Bezold] seems as fair asany other: native Chinese astronomy/astrology was probably modified by the Babylonian by at

least the sixth century B.C."255

22. When did astronomy proper begin to develop, as we understand the term? It dependson what you count as astronomy. People must have known a fair bit about the repeatingmovements and appearances of sun, moon, planets and stars long before they were able to leavewritten records. Very likely they made use of observations of the skies to predict -- or try topredict -- when the seasons would change, when was a good time to plant or harvest, whenfloods and other natural catastrophes were liable to occur, where they would land when they setout to sea, and so on.

23. On the antiquity of astronomy, Mircea Eliade says: "Alexander Marshak [sic] hasrecently been able to demonstrate the existence, in the Upper Paleolithic, of a symbolic system oftemporal notations, based on observations of the moon's phases. These notations, which the authorterms 'time-factored', that is, accumulated over a long period, permit the supposition that certainseasonal or periodic ceremonies were fixed long in advance, as is the case in our day amongSiberians and North American Indians. This systems of notations remained in force for more than25,000 years, from the early Aurignacians to the late Magdalenian. According to Marshak,writing, arithmetic, and the calendar properly speaking, which make their appearance in the firstcivilizations, are probably connected with the symbolism with which the system of notations usedduring the Paleolithic is impregnated. Whatever may be thought of Marshak's general theoryconcerning the development of civilization, the fact remains that the lunar cycle was analyzed,memorized, and used for practical purposes some 15,000 years before the discovery of agriculture.This makes more comprehensible the considerable role of the moon in archaic mythology, andespecially the fact that lunar symbolism was integrated into a single system comprising suchdifferent realities as woman, the waters, vegetation, the serpent, fertility, death, "rebirth," etc."256

24. No one knows when gods first appeared among men. Nobody knows when people beganto try to find out their wills. Who knows which ideas about gods were derived from ideas aboutthe sun, moon and stars? Sextus Empiricus says: "And Aristotle said that the conception of Godsarose amongst mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the souland from celestial phenomena. It arose from events which concern the soul because of the inspiredstates of the soul which occur in sleep and because of prophecies. For, says he, when the soul isby itself in sleep, then it takes on its true nature and prophecies and predicts the

2 5 5 Schafer, ibid.256Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 1978, French 1976, v. 1, p. 22-23; cf. Alexander Marshack, 1972,The Roots of Civilization: The Cognitive Beginnings of Man's First Art, Symbol, and Notation, p. 81 ff.

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future. And it is in this state also when it is being separated from bodies at death........Moreover(they derived this conception) from celestial phenomena also; for when they beheld the suncircling around in the day-time, and by night the orderly motion of the other stars, they supposedsome God to be the cause of such motion and orderliness."257

25. Cicero reports that the Stoic Cleanthes (c. 300-220 B.C.E.) gave four reasons to accountfor the formation in men's minds of their ideas of gods: "He put first the argument ... arising fromour foreknowledge of future events; second, the one drawn from the magnitude of the benefits wederive from our temperate climate, from the earth's fertility, and from a vast abundance of otherblessings; third, the awe inspired by lightning, storms, rain, snow, hail, floods, pestilences,earthquakes, and occasionally subterranean rumblings, showers of stones and raindrops the colourof blood, also landslips and chasms suddenly opening in the ground, also unnatural monstrositieshuman and animal, and also the appearance of meteoric lights and what are called by the Greeks'comets,' and in our language 'long-haired stars,' all of which alarming portents havesuggested to mankind the idea of the existence of some celestial and divine power. And the fourthand most potent cause of the belief he said was the uniform motion and revolution of the heavens,and the varied groupings and ordered beauty of the sun, moon and stars, the very sight of whichwas in itself enough to prove that these things are not the mere effect of chance. When a man goesinto a house, a wrestling-school or a public assembly and observes in all that goes onarrangement, regularity and system, he cannot possibly suppose that these things come aboutwithout a cause: he realizes that there is someone who presides and controls. Far more thereforewith the vast movements and phases of the heavenly bodies, and these ordered processes of amultitude of enormous masses of matter, which throughout the countless ages of the infinite pasthave never in the smallest degree played false, is he compelled to infer that these mighty world -motions are regulated by some Mind."258

2 6 . It is, then, small wonder that celestial objects came to be regarded as having power overour affairs. In omen or portent astrology, attempts are made to use such objects to predict eventsof importance to a country and its rulers. Omen astrology seems to have been indigenous toBabylonia, although the Chinese may have developed their own version independently. Bartel vander Waerden assigns the beginning of omen astrology to before the reign of Hammurabi inBabylonia (about 1800 B.C.), and perhaps much earlier. 2 5 9

27. Here's a sample: "When Scorpio approaches the front of the Moon and stands, the reignof the king will be long; the enemy will come, but his defeat will be accomplished."260 Anotherexample: "The month of Elul, 15th day, eclipse [of the moon]: the son of the king kills his fatherand seizes the throne, and the enemy advances and destroys the country. The 16th day, eclipse ofthe moon: the king of a foreign country the same [i.e., is killed by his son], the king of the countryof Hâti advances and seizes the throne. Rains in the sky, abundance of water in the

257 Sextus Empiricus, c. 200 A.D., Against the Physicists, i.20-22, also known as Adversus Dogmaticos,iii, and Adversus Mathematicos, ix.; translation by R. G. Bury, 1936, p. 11, 13258 Cicero, De natura deorum, translated by H. Rackham, 1933, p. 137-139.259Bartel van der Waerden, Science Awakening I, The Birth of Astronomy, 1974, p. 49.260R. Campbell Thompson, The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers ofNineveh and Babylon in the BritishMuseum, the original texts, printed in cuneiform characters, edited with translations, notes, vocabulary, index and anintroduction, 1900, v. 2, p. lxxi.

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canals. "261 Another: "If Mars is visible in the month of Tammuz (June-July), the beds of thesoldiers will be empty." That is, there will be a military expedition. 2 6 2

28. Although there may have been secular attitudes among Chaldean diviners, we maysuppose they were to some degree influenced by the prevailing religion. In ancient Babylonia, thesun deity Marduk, the greatest of the Babylonian gods and successor to the moon deity of theSumerians, set the celestial beings to moving and determined their courses. Marduk articulatedtime into units, and the regularity of celestial motions became a model for the life of men insociety, and a powerful force on the development of their government, work and cities. Thehighest duty of the highest officials of Babylon, the priests, was to observe and interpret themovements of the sun, moon and other celestial objects.263

29. At the head of the Babylonian and Assyrian panoply of gods is Anu. "Anu," we are told,"was the son of Anshar and Kishar. His name signified 'sky' and he reigned over the heavens...Aided by his companion, the goddess Antu, he presided from above over the fates of the universeand hardly occupied himself with human affairs. Thus, although he never ceased to be universallyvenerated, other gods finally supplanted him and took over certain of his prerogatives. But thegreat god's prestige remained such that the power of these usurper gods was never firmlyestablished until they, too, assumed the name Anu The entire course of human life was ...regulated by the sovereign will of the gods, whose chief attribute was deciding the fates of men.We have already seen how highly the gods valued this privilege which fell successively to Anu,Enlil, Ea and Marduk. Although it was the supreme god who made the final decision, all coulddiscuss it. At the beginning of every year, while on earth the festival of Zagmuk was beingcelebrated, the gods assembled in the Upshukina, the Sanctuary of Fates.

The king of the gods in the later Babylonian period, B«l-Marduk, took his place on the throne.The other gods knelt with fear and respect before him. Removing from his bosom the Tablet ofFates, B«l-Marduk confided it to his son Nabu, who wrote down on it what the gods had decided.Thus the fate of the country was fixed for the coming year."264

30. If Anu is the chief god, what was the status of his parents Anshar and Kishar? TheLarousse has it that Apsu (sweet water) and Tiamat (salt water) were the fount of all things. Thefirst offspring of these were Lakhmu and Lakhamu, "rather vague gods" who "seem to be a pair ofmonstrous serpents. They gave birth to Anshar, the male principle, and to Kishar, the femaleprinciple, who represented respectively, so some think, the celestial and terrestrial worlds. In thesame way the Greek gods were born of the union of Uranus, the sky, and Gaea, the earth. Butwhile in Greek mythology Gaea played an important role, Kishar does not appear again in the

story. " 2 6 5

2 6 1 A. Laurent, La Magie et la Divination chez les Chaldªo-Assyriens, 1894, p. 60.262Marguerite Rutten, La Science des Chaldªens, 1970, p. 95.2 6 3 Babylon, in the time of Nebuchadnezzar (died 562 B.C.E.), was probably the greatest and most well organized cityin the world, estimated to support between 250,000 and 300,000 inhabitants. It was Nebuchadnezzar who is reputedto have built the "tower of Babel", and to have destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. In Greece, this was aboutthe time of Anaximander, one of the pre-Socratic philosophers, perhaps the first person to ever make a geometricmodel of the universe, or at any rate this appears to be the earliest we know about.264Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology , 1959, p. 52-5 3, 63.2 6 5 ibid, p. 49-50.

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31. Thorkild Jacobsen tells the same story like this, based on Old Babylonian copies ofSumerian texts from the third millenium B.C. "An ranked highest among the gods. His name,borrowed by the Akkadians as Anum, is the Sumerian word for "sky" and inherently An is thenuminous power in the sky, the source of rain and the basis for the calendar since it heraldsthrough its changing constellations the times of the year with their different works andcelebrations An's spouse was the earth, Ki, on whom he engendered trees, reeds, and all other

vegetation .......There also seems to have been a tradition that saw the power in the sky as bothmale and female and distinguished the god An (Akkadian Anum) from the goddess An (AkkadianAntum) to whom he was married. According to that view the rains flowed from the sky goddess'breasts, or (since she was usually envisaged in cow shape) her udder -- that is fromthe clouds ....... An had not only engendered vegetation, he was the father and ancestor of all ofthe gods, and he likewise fathered innumerable demons and evil spirits. Frequently he wasenvisaged as a huge bull ....... The view of An as a major source of fertility, the "father who makesthe seed sprout," engenderer of vegetation, demons, and all the gods, led naturally to theattribution of paternal authority to him.....With the developing of social differentiation and theattitudes of growing respect and awe before the ruler, a new sensitivity to the potential in the vastsky for inducing feelings of numinous awe seems to have come into being. The sky can, atmoments when man is in a religiously receptive mood, act as vehicle for a profound experience ofnuminous awe, as may be instanced in our own culture."

32. Jacobsen quotes a passage from William James's The Varieties of ReligiousExperience: "I remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hilltop, where my soulopened out, as it were, into the Infinite, and there was a rushing together of the two worlds, theinner and the outer. It was deep calling unto deep,-- the deep that my own struggle had openedup within being answered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars. I stoodalone with Him who had made me, and all the beauty of the world, and love, and sorrow, andeven temptation."

33. Jacobsen continues: "To the ancient Mesopotamians what the sky might reveal was An,its own inner essence of absolute authority and majesty -- might reveal, but would not necessarilyreveal, for in everyday moods the sky would be experienced apart from the numinous power in itand would recede into the category of mere things Since human society is not the onlystructure based on authority and command (the natural world is as well), all things and forces inthe polity that is the universe conform to An's will. He is the power that lifts existence out ofchaos and anarchy and makes it an organized whole. As a building is supported by and reveals inits structure the lines of its foundation, so the ancient Mesopotamian universe was upheld by andreflected An's ordering will. His command is "the foundation of heaven and earth." As theultimate source of all authority An was closely associated with the highest authority on earth, thatof kingship. The royal insignia lie before An in heaven for him to bestow, and with them heconveys not only the general powers of kingship but duties linked to his own cosmic functions:responsibility for the calendar and for carrying out his calendric rites. For example, his new moonfestivals ... were celebrated in all temples, and the New Year festival at which the year seems tohave been named from one of the king's accomplishments. Through

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this mandate, accordingly, the king becomes An's instrument for seeing to it that the times do notget out ofjoint."266 Thus the source and model of authority and order was the heavens.

34. Since the seasons and other important events are to some degree related to movementsof the moon, sun and stars, it's reasonable to try to correlate as many events as we can with thesemovements. For example, the approximate time for the flooding of the Nile in ancient Egypt wascorrelated with movements of the sun and stars. Certain kinds of weather are correlated with theappearances of constellations, including not only their positions but also atmospheric effects.Martin Nilsson says that the most widely read of all Hellenistic poems was the Phainomena ofAratus, which was a book containing rules for predicting the weather in this way. (Martin Nilsson,Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 1950, v. 2, p. 56.)

35. The process goes on today. Here is an excerpt, entitled "Weather Prognosticator, fromthe Hagers -town Town and Country Almanackfor the year of our Lord 1989, p. 9: "This table andthe accompanying remarks are the result of many years' actual observation; the whole beingconstructed on a due consideration of the Sun and Moon, in their several positions respecting theearth; and will, by simple inspection, show the observer what kind of weather will most probablyfollow the entrance of the Moon into any of her quarters, and that so near the truth as to beseldom or never found to fail."

36. Beliefs that our father is in heaven, and that it is on earth as it is in the heavens, arewidespread. Claude Lévi-Strauss argues that among Indians of central Brazil, certain myths whichon the surface may seem to have no connection with astronomy, are in fact concerned with thealternation of seasons, and therefore a kind of year. In particular, he considers the story of Asare,told among the Sherente people, concerning the rape of a mother by her own sons (the youngest ofwhom is Asare), thrashing of the sons by their father, the sons setting fire to their parents whoescape by turning into falcons, a journey by the sons which includes the digging of a well whichgushes so much water that it forms the sea, and three or so escapes from an alligator with the helpof woodpeckers, partridges, fruit rinds and a skunk. The myth concludes: "When the sea wasformed, Asare's brothers had at once tried to bathe. Even today, toward the close of the rainyseason, one hears in the west the sound of their splashing in the water. Then they appear in theheavens, new and clean, as Sururu, the Seven Stars (the Pleiades)."267 Lévi-Strauss quotes J. F.Oliveira to the effect that among the Sherente, the year begins with the appearance of the Pleiades,which coincides roughly with the beginning of the dry season. 268

37. According to Lévi-Strauss: "Classical antiquity associated Orion with rain and storms.Now we have seen that in central Brazil, Orion is also associated with water -- but terrestrial, notcelestial water. In Greek and Roman mythology Orion caused rain to fall. As Asare, the thirstyhero, Orion makes water rise up from the depths of the earth. It is easy to understand, since it isan obvious cosmographical fact, that the same constellation that casues rain to fall in the northernhemisphere should be a harbinger of drought in the southern hemisphere: in the inland areasbetween the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn, the rainy season corresponds approximately to

266 Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness, A History ofMesopotamian Religion, 1976, p. 95-97.

267 Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, 1969, translation by P. and D. Weightman of Le cru etle cuit, 1964, p. 199-200, v. 1 of Mythologiques (Introduction to a Science of Mythology).268 ibid., p. 217.

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our autumn and winter, the dry season to our spring and summer. The Asare myth faithfullypresents the "southern" version of this factual truth, since the Pleiades and Orion which followsclosely in their wake, are said to herald the beginning of the dry season."269

38. There is a problem here, since in "in one hemisphere Orion is associated with celestialwater in accordance with meteorological experience, while in the other hemisphere, withoutthere being any possibility of establishing a connection with experience, symmetry is preserved bymeans of an apparently incomprehensible link between Orion and water which is chthonic inorigin --that is, celestial water conceived of, as it were, upside down." (p. 227) Lévi-Strausstraces this opposition by way of a transformation of a key myth of the Bororo people. He says:"It is therefore clear that the two myths, the one belonging to the Ancient World [of Europeanclassical antiquity] and the other to the New [Bororo of central Brazil], are, as I postulated,reflections of each other. The apparent inversions arise simply from the fact that while both areconcerned with the dry season, one myth refers to the beginning (after the rains) and the other tothe end (before the rains)." (ibid., p. 239).

39. The point is that myths which superficially are about incest, rape, arduous anddangerous journeys, people turning into birds or other creatures, and the like, may turn out to bedescriptions of astronomical and associated seasonal phenomena. However, in the view of Lévi -Strauss: "In granting that myths have an astronomical significance, I do not propose to revert inany way to the mistaken ideas characteristic of the solar mythography of the nineteenth century. Inmy view, the astronomical context does not provide any absolute point of reference; we cannotclaim to have interpreted the myths simply by relating them to this context. The truth of the mythdoes not lie in any special content. It consists in logical relations which are devoid of content or,more precisely, whose invariant properties exhaust their operative value, since comparablerelations can be established among the elements of a large number of different contents."

40. "For instance, I have shown that one particular theme, such as the origin of man'smortality, occurs in myths that appear quite different from each other in subject matter, but that inthe last analysis these differences can be reduced to a variety of codes, evolved on the basis of thedifferent sense categories -- taste, hearing, smell, feel, and sight In the preceding pages, Ihave been solely concerned [in interpeting the myths astronomically] to establish the existence of adifferent code, also a visual one, but whose lexical material consists of contrasted pairs drawnfrom a stable periodicity of the year and, on the other, of the synchronic arrangement of the stars inthe sky. This cosmographic code is no truer than any other; and it is no better, except from themethodological point of view, as far as its operations can be checked from without. But it is notimpossible that advances in biochemistry may one day provide objective references of the samedegree of accuracy as a check on the precision and coherence of the codes formulated in thelanguage of the senses. Myths are constructed on the basis of a certain logicality of tangiblequalities which makes no clear-cut distinction between subjective states and the properties of thecosmos."270 Thus different "codes" are different realizations of structures of human physiology,and Lévi- Strauss weights the different codes equally.

269 Lévi -Srauss, ibid. , p . 226 - 227.

270 ibid . , p . 240.

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41. We can wonder, however, whether or not an astronomical code has a kind of priority.According to many cosmologies, the stars and their ways precede the living and their ways. Towhat extent have we developed in consonance with celestial objects and movements? To whatextent are our physiology and thoughts tied to the stars? As described by Lévi-Strauss, amongIndians of Brazil, fire for cooking food is related to the sun: "The mediatory function of cookingfire therefore operates between the sun and humanity in two ways. By its presence, cooking fireaverts total disjunction, since it unites the sun and the earth and saves man from the world ofrottenness in which he would find himself if the sun really disappeared; but its presence is alsointerposed; that is to say, it obviates the risk of a total conjunction, which would would result in aburned world. Incest and cannibalism in the myths are linked with eclipses, and the origin ofdiseases.271

42. "Starting from the problem of the mythic origin of cooking," says Lévi-Strauss, "I havebeen led to verify my interpretation of domestic fire as a mediatory agent between sky and earthby reference to the myth describing incest between blood relatives as the origin of the eclipse

A myth about the origin of storms and rain [the one Lévi-Strauss started with] led meto myths about the origin of fire and the cooking of foodstuffs... I was able to establish that allthese myths belong to one and the same set "272 Which explains which? Do analogousactions of sun, moon and other stars explain or describe the origin of cooking fires? Or does theanalogy of the origin of cooking fires explain or describe actions of the sun, moon and stars? Arethese interchangeable? If not, which takes precedence? Recall Seneca on the Etruscans: "Sincethey attribute everything to divine agency, they are of the opinion that things do not reveal thefuture because they have occurred, but that they occur because they are meant to reveal thefuture."

43. Besides some roughly correct season and even (at times) weather forecasting, therewere no doubt successes in predicting such events as attacks by enemies, since, for example,rulers probably tended to attack after harvests, when their troops were well-supplied with food,and harvests are correlated with the seasons. However, prediction by consulting objects in thesky of such things as who would be victorious in a war was likely to have been more chancy,unless, of course, the objects were arrows and spears. Isaiah, it seems, spoke sarcastically when hesaid:

Come down and sit in the dust, Ovirgin daughter of Babylon............................You are wearied with your many counsels;let them stand forth and save you,

those who divide the heavens, whogaze at the stars,who at the new moons predictwhat shall befall you ......................................they cannot deliver themselves

from the power of the flame. 2 7 3

271 Lévi-Strauss, ibid., p. 293, 297.

272 ibid., p. 298, 300.273 Isa iah 47, Revised Standard Vers ion.

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44. The mathematical astronomy of the Babylonians underwent a considerabledevelopment between about 539 and 331 B.C.E., during the reign of the Persians in Babylonia. Itis during this period, perhaps about 450 B.C.E., that personal astrology, the casting of horoscopesaccording to birth dates, developed. There is an old tradition that horoscopy was introduced to theGreeks by Berossos, a Babylonian priest who founded the first Greek school of astrology on theisland of Kos about 300 B.C.E. However, it appears that we have Greek horo scopes from about150 years earlier. On the task of personal astrology, Auguste Bouché-Leclercq, says: "Thecalculation of the length of life, with an indication of the kind of death pre - assigned by the stars, isthe great work of astrology, the operation judged the most difficult by its adepts, the mostdangerous and damnable by its enemies."274

45. Van der Waerden summarizes the development of astrology in this part of the world inthe 6th century B.C.E. as follows: "We have seen that, after the fall of the Assyrian empire (-611)the old polytheism was being pushed aside by a new religious movement which flooded in twomighty waves from Iran to the West. The first wave was that of Zervanism, which reached Greeceabout - 550. The second was the worship of Ahura Mazda, which was proclaimed around - 500B.C.E. as the official religion of the Persian empire. Connected with this was the doctrine of thecelestial origin and immortality of the soul. We have also seen that the old Omen astrology wasreplaced, about the same time or somewhat later, by a new zodiacal astrology, within which wehave to distinguish two further stages: primitive zodiacal astrology and horoscopy. The first isconnected in the sources with Orphism, which in its turn is most closely tied up with Zervanism.On the other hand, horoscopy is closely connected with the doctrine of the celestial origin of thesoul; its existence can be demonstrated in Babylon about - 450 and in Greece about - 440."275 Thename of the god Zervan Akarana means "boundless time." The Zervanists, whose sect appears tohave been formed about the 4th century B.C.E., were astral fatalists who believed that "allfortune, good and ill, that befalls man, comes from the twelve [zodiacal signs] and the seven[planets]".276

46. By about 300 B.C.E., the Babylonians had constructed tables, based on centuries ofobservations, with which they could successfully predict lunar eclipses, and with which theycould at times rule out solar eclipses. A basic underlying problem they were trying to solve is aform of one which haunts mathematical astronomy to this day. From one point of view, this is theproblem of predicting the day on which a new moon will occur. The days are determined by themovement of Earth with respect to the sun (or vice versa), while new moons are determined bythe movement of the moon with respect to Earth. Thus the combined motions of sun, moon, andEarth are involved. The problem of predicting the movements of the sun, moon and Earth withrespect to one another, starting from Newton's laws of mechanics and gravitation, is known todayas the 3-body problem. In some important respects, the 3-body problem is still unsolved, althougha great deal is known about some basic special cases, and there are elaborate techniques forapproximating solutions. The Babylonian methods were a kind of approximation technique,

274Auguste Bouché-Leclerq, L'Astrologie grecque, 1899, p. 404.275Bartel van der Waerden, Science Awakening I, The Birth of Astronomy, 1974, p. 183.2 7 6 This quotation is given by van der Waerden (p. 162) from a Persian book called Mainog-i Khirad or Menok iKhrat, written sometime between 220 and 650 C.E.

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based on interpolation, inserting calculated values between observed values in systematic ways. Asfar as seems to be known at present, the first attempts to use geometry to model the movementsof celestial objects and relations between them were made by the ancient Greeks in the 6thcentury B.C.E. The Babylonians seem not to have made geometrical models for this purpose, orat least none have been found.

47. We have fragments of a geometric cosmology put forward by the philosopherAnaximander in the 6th century B.C.E. Anaximander may have been the first to undertake aproject of this kind. He appears to have pictured the sky as a complete sphere rather than aninverted bowl or hemisphere. Spheres were to become the basis of geometric cosmology formany centuries. However, for some unknown reason, if we can trust the fragment we have from solong ago, Anaximander seems to have proposed that the earth is a right circular cylinder with thegreatest curvature in the north-south direction.277

48. The arithmetical predictions of the Babylonians and the geometric construction of theheavens by the classical Greek philosophers contrast in a startling way with other cosmologies ofthat era in the Near East, and with other ancient Greek cosmologies, in which the heavens arepeopled with gods who often act unpredictably and capriciously. Geometric cosmologies weredeveloped extensively by astronomers and philosophers of nature during the next several centuriesafter the time of Anaximander. Plato and Aristotle, in the 4th century B.C.E., made use of the workof these pre-Socratic thinkers in developing their own cosmologies. We find in the works of Platoand Aristotle the first extended and detailed reports, which we still have today, of cosmologiesbased on geometry, as developed by Eudoxus of Cnidus and other mathematical astronomers ofthe time. They had enormous influence on the development of Western cosmologies from the timethey were composed. The special kind of certainty which geometric models seem to reveal aboutthe movements of the heavens, blended with an older personification and deification of heavenlyobjects, were, it appears, instrumental in the development of astrology.

49. Geometric models in astronomy developed hand in hand with geometry itself. Eudoxusof Cnidus (4th century B.C.E.) is said to have been a student of Plato. He was one of the greatastronomers, and also one of the great geometers, of his time. Besides being the source of themathematical astronomy of Aristotle, he was, as we mentioned earlier, a possible supporter ofastrology. In astronomy, he developed an elaborate cosmology based on spheres moving onspheres. In geometry, he developed a theoretical and logically satisfying theory of magnitudescorresponding to our real numbers. This theory, which has been preserved in Euclid's geometrybook, the Elements (c. 300 B.C.E.) is much like one developed by the German mathematicianRichard Dedekind about the middle of the 19th century (as Dedekind himself stated). This systemis in use today. Eudoxus seems also to have invented the method of exhaustion for finding areasand volumes, a method which is much like an application of the definite integrals of calculus weuse today for this purpose, although not formulated as generally. With this method, he found anequivalent of our formulas for the area of a circle, and the volumes of a right circular cylinder,sphere and cone.

2 7 7 "It was Henry Ibsen who said that the value of a truth lasted about fifteen years, then it rotted into error." JamesHuneker, Old Fogy, 1913, quoted in A New Dict ionary of Quota t ions , 1942, edited by H. L. Mencken, p. 1226.

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50. The Elements of Euclid was (or were) the principal introduction to geometry for over2000 years, and the geometry it contained has had, and continues to have, many terrestrial as wellas celestial applications. More than that, the Elements has served as a model of a kind ofattainment of certainty -–given the initial assumptions, the axioms and postulates -- which peoplehave often tried to extend to other domains besides geometry. Euclid's method, commonly knowntoday as the axiomatic method, was described, in one form, by Aristotle in his works on logic,especially in the Posterior Analytics. It appears that Eudoxus originated the self-conscious andexplicit use of this method, and so was one of the founders of a philosophical tradition of thinkingabout thinking, and reasoning about reasoning. The science of deductive logic founded by Plato,and even more Aristotle, was based in important respects on extrapolation from this method of themathematicians.

51. It is curious, and rather sobering, to notice that versions of Euclid's Elements quitefaithful to the original, or at least to parts of it, were used in elementary instruction for over 2000years, but that this practice has been discontinued in the course of the past two centuries. Thechange began after the French Revolution of 1789, and appear to have been motivated (orcondoned) as part of a general rejection of learning of the past. Some distance into the 20thcentury, textbooks in the United States still bore considerable resemblance to Euclid's Elements,despite the alleged reforms of the previous century, but today this is no longer so. It appears thatEuclid's Elements, in forms faithful to the originals, have gone the way of Newton's Principia informs faithful to the originals. They are structures of the past, antiques, no longer functionalexcept indirectly, by way of their influences. And yet, it's not a bad idea, at any rate in the case ofEuclid if not Newton, to study a translation of Euclid into a modern language as part of one’smathematical education, especially if one is training to be a mathematician or natural scientist.

52. There are modern versions of Euclid's Elements in which certain logical deficiencies ofEuclid's _Elements have been removed. A central one has been the Grundlagen der Geometrie(Foundations of Geometry) of David Hilbert.278 However, the spirit of Euclid maintained byHilbert has given way to a large extent to the use of numerical coordinates, based on the analytic (oralgebraic) geometry associated with the name of Descartes. We no longer make children associatehow they see with how they reason in the direct way Euclid did, but rather with how they count,and this is usually presented in books in colorful language and with colorful pictures. StephenLeacock may have had an explanation for the way elementary geometry books in schools looktoday, when he said: "To make education attractive! There it is! To call in the help of poetry, ofmusic, of grand opera, if need be, to aid in the teaching of the dry subjects of the college classroom Here, for example, you have Euclid writing in a perfectly prosaic way all in small typesuch an item as the following: "A perpendicular is let fall on a line BC so as to bisect it at thepoint C, etc., etc.," just as if it were the most ordinary occurrence in the world. Every newspaperman will see at once that it ought to be set up thus:

2 7 8 1st edition, 1899; last edition during Hilbert's lifetime, 1930; there have been two translations into English.

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"AWFUL CATASTROPHEPERPENDICULAR FALLS HEADLONG

ON A GIVEN POINTThe Line at C said to be completely bisected

President of the Line makes Statementetc., etc., etc." 2 7 9

The best translation into English of Euclid's Elements is by Thomas Heath. Heath providescopious notes to guide one in studying the work.280

53. To apply the axiomatic method found in Euclid's geometry, one starts from basicstatements usually called axioms or postulates (although hypotheses or assumptions wouldamount to about the same), taken as true for purposes of reasoning (though in some applications,they may not be true, or true enough), and using some rules of logic, derives chains of statementslinking the axioms to other statements, called theorems, which are then also taken to be true, andthen may be regarded, if one chooses, as axioms themselves. These chains of statements make upproofs of the theorems. Sometimes the term propositions is used instead of theorems, but oftenpropositions are taken to be statements to be proved, if possible, rather than statements alreadyproved. Thus a proposition may turn out to be true or false or undecided or even undecidable in acertain sense, depending on whether or not a proof or counterexample or neither has been found,and on whether or not a proof or counterexample can be found within the given axiomatic system.Since axioms are not proved, but taken as a basis for application of the method, problems arise ofdeciding on the validity of the axioms and their theorems when making applications. If the axiomsor theorems are meant to be applied to the movements of physical objects, on Earth or in theheavens, one way to test their validity is by using them to make predictions about the places andshapes of physical objects, and seeing whether or not the predictions come true, at least to withinsome margin of error taken to be allowable. From this point of view, geometry is an empiricalscience, perhaps the earliest such science. However, some philosophers have held that the axiomsof geometry are statements about the way people, or their minds or brains, are constituted, andespecially about the way we are constrained to see the world with our eyes. It is from this, onemay maintain, that many of the axioms of geometry get the peculiar certainty they have.

54. From another point of view, the Elements of Euclid is a treatise on the five regularsolids: the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron. The last "book" orchapter of the Elements treats these solids, and a good deal of what went before in the Elements isused in this last chapter. The regular solids are solids in which all of the faces of any one of themare congruent plane figures with equal sides and angles. The 4 faces of the tetrahedron, the 8 facesof the octahedron and the 20 faces of the icosahedron are equilateral triangles, the 6 faces of a cubeare squares, and the 12 faces of a dodecahedron are regular pentagons. In the _Elements_, Euclidshows how to construct these solids, establishing along the way theorems which have many otherapplications. He also shows that these five are the only regular solids which can be theoreticallyconstructed in a way consistent with his axioms and postulates. These regular solids werediscovered before the time of Euclid, and even before the time of Plato.

279 Stephen Leacock, "Education Made Agreeable", from Mo o n b ea ms f ro m th e La rg er Lu n a cy _ 1915, p.155, 159.280 1925, reprinted by Dover, 1956 and later.

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Plato used them as an important component of his cosmology in his dialogue Timaeus. Keplerused them in a vital way later, near the end of the 16th century A.D., in his cosmology of oursolar system.

55. Another famous astronomer and geometer of ancient Greece was Apollonius, whoworked in the early part of the 3rd century B.C. Apollonius had a major influence on thedevelopment of astronomy by virtue of his mathematical model of the solar system based oneccentric and epicyclic motions. An eccentric motion is one which takes place with a constantspeed on a circle, but is referred to a point inside the circle other than the center of the circle. Anepicyclic motion is one which takes place on a circle rotating at a constant speed about its center,with this center on another circle also rotating at a constant speed. Among other things,Apollonius seems to have shown that any eccentric motion can be interpreted as an epicyclicmotion, and conversely. The major mathematical work of Apollonius concerned the mathematicalfigures known as conic sections, which had been discovered by earlier mathematicians. The conicsections are cut out when a plane is passed through a complete right circular cone. Aside fromcertain special cases, known as degenerate conics, the conic sections comprise the ellipses(including the circles), the para bolas, and the hyperbolas. One of the songs of Gilbert andSullivan is about the practicality of conic sections:

"I am the very model of a modern Major-General; ....

I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, Iunderstand equations, both the simple and quadratical, Aboutthe binomial theorem, I'm teeming with a lot of news, With manycheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse ........................

I quote, in Elegiacs, all the crimes of Heliogabalus! Inconics I can floor peculiarities parabolous. 2 8 1

An easy way to generate ellipses is to shine a flashlight on a flat surface like a desk or table, and tiltthe flashlight back and forth. The cone in this case is the light generated by the flashlight, and theplane being passed through the cone is the desk top. The lighted spot is then in the form of anellipse (to a good approximation), though sometimes just the boundary of the lighted spot iscalled an ellipse. You can also generate the beginnings of an hyperbola by holding a flashlightlengthways on a wall.

73. In considering the changes in astronomy brought about by Copernicus (1473-1543), it iswell to keep in mind the evaluation of his work made by N. M. Smerdlow and Otto Neugebauerin their detailed study of the major work of Copernicus, the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium(1543). They say: "Copernicus made one fundamental innovation in planetary theory [making thesun as center of coordinates], the consequences of which only became evident in the work ofKepler and Newton. In the remainder of his astronomy, he was one of the last representatives of atradition extending from Hipparchus, or better Ptolemy, to his most direct predecessor,Regiomontanus [1436-1476], whose Epitome of the Almagest was his

2 8 1 W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance, 1880, Act 1.

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guide to the astronomy of Ptolemy, and may have provided the crucial step to the heliocentrictheory."

74. "The tradition of Ptolemaic astronomy received, in the course of nearly fourteencenturies, many additions and modifications, of non-Ptolemaic Greek, Indian, Arabic, and last ofall, European origin. Copernicus was heir to some fraction of these, but fundamentally hisastronomy, in common with the most sophisticated astronomy of the intervening period, restsupon the work of Ptolemy. And even the principal ways in which he differs from Ptolemy --exceptfor the heliocentric theory -- are part of an Arabic tradition concerned more with internalproblems in Ptolemy's work than with new descriptions of the motions of the planets, somethingthat did not occur until the observational and theoretical innovations of Tycho and Kepler. Thebackground to Copernicus's astronomy is of course the entire accumulation of observations,procedures, models, and parameters since the time of Ptolemy, in so far as they were transmitted toCopernicus. But out of this large and diverse body of material, what is the most important toconsider here are the general principles of Ptolemy's mathematical and physical astronomy, theinteresting modifications in the latter made by the astronomers of Maragha in the thirteenth andfourteenth centuries, and the rebirth of a true understanding of Ptolemaic astronomy in Europethrough the work of Regiomontanus."282

75. "Copernicus," said Kepler, "ignorant of his own riches, took it upon himself for themost part to represent Ptolemy, not nature, to which he had nevertheless come the closest of all."This is cited by Smerdlow and Neugebauer as a famous and just assessment of Copernicus.283

76. It has often been said that the Copernican heliocentric theory was superior to thePtolemaic theory because it was simpler. However, Smerdlow and Neugebauer observe: "Anyonewho thinks that Copernican theory is "simpler" than Ptolemaic theory has never looked at Book IIIof De revolutionibus. In a geocentric system the earth is at rest -- as indeed it appears to be -- andany apparent motions in the heavens that we know to result from its motions are distributed amonga number of objects, i.e. the sun, the individual planets, the sphere of the fixed stars, everything inits proper place as it actually appears. But when Copernicus worked through the consequences ofhis own theory, he had to attribute to the earth no less than three fundamental motions and anumber of secondary motions. That all these compounded motions forced upon a single and, to allappearances, quiescent body seemed implausible to his contemporaries is not to be wondered at,especially because the end result was nothing other than reproducing the same apparent motions inthe heavens that had been accounted for all along (and without making assumptions thatcontradicted contemporary natural philosophy, common sense, and the most casual or mostmeticulous observations then possible of the behavior of the earth and of objects on or near itssurface)."284

77. Copernicus's belief in the superiority of his own theory was based on such facts asthese: In his system, the order and distances of the planets could be unambiguously determined,and shown to form a single harmonious whole. In the geocentric theory, only relative radii of

282N. M. Smerdlow and Otto Neugebauer, Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus 's De Revolutionibus, 1984, v. 1, p.33.283 ibid., p. 483.284 ibid., p. 127.

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eccentrics and epicycles were known, and for one planet at a time -- there were no relationsbetween radii for different planets. Using the heliocentric theory, it was possible to explain anumber of other puzzling features of the Ptolemaic theory, such as why the centers of theepicycles of the inferior planets (Mercury and Venus) lie in the direction of the sun, why the radii ofthe epicycles of the superior planets (the other known planets) stay parallel to the direction fromthe earth to the sun, and so on.

78. In connection with why Copernicus chose to adopt a heliocentric system for the planets,Smerdlow and Neugebauer remark: "Some rather far-fetched answers have been given, with a lotof hand-waving in the direction of Neoplatonism, Hermes Trismegistus, and ... sun-worshipping.Although one could perhaps say that anyone in 1510 who was capable of believing that the earthmoved was capable of believing anything -- and there is no telling what strange things Copernicusbelieved -- it seems to us that there is no foundation for these claims. Among other reasons, theyare based on the highly anachronistic belief that the heliocentric theory and the motion of theearth were entirely obvious and there for the taking if only one had the correct metaphysical ormystical faith. But this is simply untrue. Copernicus arrived at the heliocentric theory by a carefulanalysis of planetary models -- and as far as is known, he was the only person of his age to do so --and if he chose to adopt it, he did so one the basis of an equally careful analysis."285

7 9 . As to why Copernicus was so reluctant to publish his results, Smerdlow and Neugebauerobserve that Copernicus undoubtedly realized "that he had not been able to prove the motion of theearth, but only argue with greater or lesser persuasiveness for its plausibility, a distinction that iscrucial to understanding his difficulty. Copernicus was no fool. He knew what he could and couldnot do, and little service has been done to his reputation by the common biographical tradition thathe had thoroughly proved his case and merely feared that the rest of the rold would be too stupidto understand. He was in the situation -- not infrequent in the sciences, in scholarship, in law -- ofbeing certain that he was right, but lacking conclusive proof. And to make matters worse, hebelieved he was right about something so unusual that others would find it, not merely uncertainor doubtful, but impossible and even absurd, This was the difficulty for his reluctance to publish,and for the controversial solution that accompanied the published book. " 2 8 6

80. The "controversial solution" is a reference to a preface by a Lutheran minister, AndreasOsiander (1498-1552) to the first edition of the De revolutionibus, in which Osiander "prettymuch said that astronomy is filled with absurdities, that it is essentially impossible forastronomical hypotheses to reach true causes -- unless they are divinely revealed -- and thatanyone who takes them as true will depart from astronomy a greater fool than when he entered."(ibid., p. 29.) It is of some interest to note that Georg Rheticus (1514-1574), who seems to havebeen Copernicus's only disciple and the person who finally convinced Copernicus to publish hisprincipal work, was an ardent astrologer.287

285 Smerdlow and Neugebauer, ibid., p. 59.

286 ibid., p. 20.287 cf. Smerdlow and Neugebauer, ibid., p. 23.

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81. Many conclusions about the reception and effects of Copernican's heliocentric theoryhave been made by people comfortably ignorant of the vast mathematical and observationaldifficulties involved in it, and its close connection, as far as astronomers were concerned, with thegeocentric theories of Ptolemy and later astronomers. It may be argued that it is not necessary tounderstand or even be aware of these complexities in order to gauge the effect of the theory on non-astronomers of the time, who themselves were unaware of these complexities. Still, it is easy tomisevaluate the influence of a theory if one doesn't understand very much of the theory.

82. For example, it is often said that one effect of the placing of the sun at the center of thesolar system by Copernicus in the 16th century caused men to stop thinking of themselves asbeing the most important of creatures since they no longer could think of themselves as the centerof the universe. However, while Ptolemy placed Earth at the center of the universe, he madeEarth a mere point at the center, in comparison with the immensity of the heavens. This, togetherwith widespread beliefs about the corruptibility of Earth, as compared with the incorruptibility ofthe heavens, didn't leave Earth in a very enviable position.

83. An example from as late as Renaissance England of how the place of Earth was viewedbefore heliocentrism is given by Francis Johnson: "In preparing English minds for the rejection ofAristotle's scientific doctrines, the _Zodiacus vitae_ of Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus played avery significant part this extremely popular little book [was] first printed at Venice about 1531.In England no other Latin poem of the Renaissance, except perhaps the eclogues of Mantuan, wasso well known or so universally admired As early as 1560 an English translation, by BarnabyGooge, of the first three books was published ... and in 1565 Googe's translation of the entirepoem was published ... under the title of The Zodiake of life The many references to Palingeniusin Elizabethan literature, together with the fact that most schoolboys had been required to study itand that many unlearned Englishmen had read it in Googe's popular translation, prove that hisinfluence on contemporary thought must have been very great. Like most long poems of theRenaissance, the Zodiacus vitae was intended by its author as a summary of all learning, and awide variety of philosophic and scientific ideas of the past were introduced and discussed ....Palingenius, although conceiving the stars to be attached to the eighth sphere, maintains that theyare innumerable, that they are not of the same size (many of them being too small to be seen), andthat the stars are many times the size of the earth. He also mentions, in passing, the idea of certainearly Greek philosophers, especially Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Leucippus, that every star wasa world, and our earth merely one of the stars, and states:

... some have thoughtyt euery starre a worlde we well may call, The earth they count a darkenedstarre, whereas the least of all. 2 8 8

Along these lines, S. K. Heninger, Jr., remarks that in the Somnium Scipionis (Dream ofScipio), Cicero (105-43 B.C.)) reports how Scipio, looking down from heaven, is struck by thetriviality of the earth compared to the vastness of the panorama spread beneath him. WhenMacrobius (c. 400 A.D.) came to this passage in his commentary on the Somnium, he confirmedthis sentiment that denigrated man and his habitation. This is the same image presented byPtolemy in a more scientific context. J. D. North refers to the remarks of Cicero and Macrobius

2 8 8 Francis Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England , 1968, p. 145 -147.

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as being possibly the source of a similar comment by Boethius (c. 475-524) in his Deconsolationephilosophiae (On the Consolations of Philosophy), which in turn has an echo insome lines from the poem The Parliament of Fowls [Fools] of Chaucer (c. 1345-1400):

Thanne shewede he hym the lytel Erthe, that here is, /At regard of the hevenes quantite ...

And there are these lines from Chaucers's Troilus and Criseyde:

And down from thennesfaste he gan avyseThis litel spot of erthe, that with the seeEmbraced us, and fully gan despise Thiswretched world, and held al vanite Torespect ofthepleynfeliciteThat is in hevene above ... 2 8 9

85. The view of Earth as infinitesimal and wretched (so different from the view from the moonrelayed by astronauts) continued to be a commonplace in the Renaissance. It was solemnly citedby the English educator Robert Recorde, in his address in 1556 to students encouraging them tobe diligent. For Recorde, Henninger says, the study of cosmography --which Recorde took toinclude astronomy, astrology and geography -- is a kind of moral choice. "We may grovel asgroundlings among the brutes, or we may turn our attention up the scale of being and aspire afterangels in the empyrean."290

86. Montaigne (1533-1592) wrote his essays (published 1580-1595) in the years in whichthe impact of Copernicanism was just beginning to be felt, and Montaigne appears to have hadlittle interest in it, except to implicitly resist its implications. In his Apology For RaimondSebond, he quotes Manilius: "And, what is more, God himself does not begrudge the world theshape of the heavens; he shows his face and body always revolving; and he impresses andpresents himself so he can be better known, and teach us by seeing what he is, and teach us toattend to his laws."291

87. Montaigne goes on: "Now, our human reasonings and arguments are [like] lumpishand sterile matter; the grace of God is [what fashions them]; it is that which gives them shapeand value Let us, then, consider now man by himself, without external aid, armed only withhis own weapons, and deprived of divine favour and recognition .......Let us see how muchsupport he has in that fine equipment ........What has made him believe that the wonderful motionsof the celestial vault, the eternal light of those luminaries revolving so proudly above his head,and the terrifying motions of the infinite sea were established and continued for many ages forhis pleasure and for his service? Is it possible to imagine any thing so ridiculous as this wretched,paltry creature, who, being not even his own master, exposed to the offences of all

289 J. D. North, Chaucer's Universe (1988), p. 11-12.

290 S. K. Henninger, Jr., The Cosmographical Glass, Renaissance Diagrams of the Universe, 1977, p. 11-12.

291 Manilius, Astronomica (1st century A.D.), IV, 907; text on p. 1806 of A Handbook to the EssaysofMichel de Montaigne containing notes by George Ives to his translation of the essays, and comments by GraceNorton on the essays; the quotation by Montaigne is on p. 591-592 of v. 1 of Ives's translation (1925) as republished in1946; the handbook is v. 3 of this edition; this is my translation of the passage by Manilius, not Ives's.

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things, declares himself master and ruler of the universe of which it is not in his power tounderstand the smallest fragment, far less to govern it? And this prerogative that he attributes tohimself, of being the only creature in this great structure who has the ability to recognize beautyand its part, the only one who can render thanks to the architect, and keep account of the incomeand outlay of the world -- who has set the seal of this prerogative upon him?." 292

88. "But, poor wretch, what has he in himself worthy of such a privilege? When we considerthe incorruptible life of the heavenly bodies, their beauty, their grandeur, their continual motion byso exact a rule; 'when we gaze up at the celestial expanse of the great heaven, at the aether aboveus set with twinkling stars, and when we remember the courses of the sun and moon',293 when weconsider the domination and power that those bodies have, not only over our lives and theconditions of our fortunes, -- 'For the actions and the lives of men depend on the stars'294 but evenover our inclinations, our judgments, our wills, which they govern, impel, and stir, at the mercy oftheir influences, as our reason teaches us and discovers, -- 'and perceives that the stars, beheld fromafar, govern us by their silent commanding laws, and the whole universe to be moved by changingrelations, and successive destinies run through fixed signs';295 when we see that only a man, notonly a king, but monarchies, empires, and this lower world move with the changes of the slightestcelestial motion; 'And what great changes are made by small movements ... so great is this powerthat rules even kings'296 .... if we hold from the disposition of heaven such share of reason as wehave, how can reason make us equal to that? Presumption is our natural and original malady. Themost unfortunate and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most vain-glorious, thiscreature feels and sees that it is lodged here amid the mire and filth of the world, fast bound andriveted to the worst, the most lifeless and debased part of the universe, on the lowest story of thelodging and the farthest removed from the celestial vault, with these other living beings of theworst condition of the three [among those who crawl, rather than swim or fly]; and it establishesitself in imagination above the circle of the moon, and brings heaven under its feet."297

89. So we see the post-Copernican Montaigne securely imbedded in a pre-Copernicanuniverse, and complaining of the vain-glorious pride of men who presume to understand the waysof the heavens. "How limited are our minds," he says (his emphasis). "Are not these fancies ofhuman vanity, to make of the moon a celestial earth, to dream, like Anaxagoras, of mountains andvalleys there, and to plant colonies there for our convenience, as Plato does, and Plutarch?"298

What is more -- and quite remarkably -- he asks us to mitigate our pride on the grounds of arigorous astrological interpretation of the influence of the heavens. We are at the mercy of themotions of the stars, he says, and this should make us humble. Men, it appears, are not over-proudwhen they attribute such powers to celestial objects -- this is an act of pious acquiescence. Of theheavenly bodies, he says: "Why do we deprive them of soul and of life and

292Montaigne, Ives's translation, ibid., p. 592, 595-6.293 Lucretius, de reru m natura , V, 1204; translated by Russel Geer (1965).294 Manilius, ibid, III, 58.295 ibid. I, 60.296 ibid., I, 55 and IV, 93.297 Montaigne, ibid., p. 596-599.298 ibid, p. 598.

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of reason? Have we perceived in them some settled and senseless stupidity, we who have nocommerce with them except that of obedience?"299

90. In the face of views like those reflected in the works of Palingenius and Montaigne, itappears that the more likely effect of Copernicanism on some was not to make men humblebecause they had been displaced from the center of the universe, but to make them proud thatCopernicus and his adherents -- Kepler, Galileo, and the rest -- had revealed a part of God'shandiwork, and proud of the handiwork itself. Too proud says Montaigne. But why not a littlepride? Speaking of his system, Copernicus himself said: "So we find in this admirablearrangement a harmony of the Universe, as well as a certain relationship between the motion andthe size of the spheres, such as can be discovered in no other way Verily, so perfect is thisdivine work of the Great and Supreme Architect."300

91. Koyré comments that the great advantage of the system from the point of view ofCopernicus lies in its revelation of the systematic structure of the Universe, and not in itsproviding the best agreement with observational data and ease of computation. "History hasproved him to be right", says Koyré.301

92. Whatever its effect on human pride, the work of Copernicus inaugurated a new era inastronomy, to be worked out by people like Kepler and Newton, which was to bring Ptolemy'ssupremacy to an end. For some, the Copernican system remains upsetting. The poet Rainer MariaRilke describes in a fanciful way one such person: "Later, Nikolai Kuzmitch always used to givehis word of honor that, although he was understandably in a very depressed mood that Sundayevening, he hadn't had a thing to drink. He was therefore perfectly sober when the followingincident occurred, as far as one can tell what actually happened I have been meddling withnumbers, he said to himself. All right, I don't understand the first thing about numbers. But it'sobvious they shouldn't be granted too much importance; they are, after all, just a kind ofarrangement created by the government for the sake of public order. No one had every seen themanywhere but on paper. It was impossible, for example, to meet a Seven or a Twenty-five at aparty. There simply weren't any there "

93. "'Let it nevertheless...,' he was just about to think, when something bizarre happened.He suddenly felt a breath on his face; it moved past his ears; it was on his hands now. And as he satthere in the dark, with eyes wide open, he began to realize that what he was feeling now was realtime, as it passed by. He recognized, with absolute clarity, all these tiny seconds, all equallytepid, each one exactly like the others, but fast, but fast He jumped up, but the surpriseswere not yet over. Beneath his feet too there was something moving; not just one emotion, butseveral, which strangely shook in and against one another. He stiffened with terror: could that bethe earth? Of course it was. The earth did, after all, move. He had heard about that in school; butit was passed over rather quickly, and later on was completely hushed up; it

300 Quoted from the _De revolutionibus orbium coelestium_ (1543) of Copernicusby Alexandre Koyré in The Astronomical Revolution, Copernicus - Kepler – Borelli, 1973, p. 53-54; translation of Larévolution astronomique 1961.301 Koyré. ibid., p. 108.

299 Montaigne, ibid., p. 598.

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was considered not a proper subject for discussion. But now that he had become more sensitive, hewas able to feel this too .......... "

94. "Unfortunately he then remembered something else, about the oblique position of theearth's axis. No, he couldn't endure all these motions. He felt sick. Lying down and keeping quietwere the best remedy, he had once read somewhere. And since that day Nikolai Kuzmitsch hadbeen lying in bed. He lay there and kept his eyes closed. And there were times, during the lessshaken days, so to speak, when it was quite bearable. And then he had devised this routine withthe poems. It was unbelievable how much that helped. When you recited a poem slowly, with aregular emphasis on the rhyme words, then something more or less stable existed, which youcould keep a steady gaze on, inwardly of course. It was lucky he knew all these poems by heart

He didn't complain about his situation... But in the course of time an exaggeratedadmiration had developed in him for those who, like the student, managed to walk around andendured the motion of the earth."302

95. In the novel Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo (1976), there is a astronomer and speculativescientist named Endor who lives in a hole. Endor has become exasperated. "Science requires us todeny the evidence of the senses," he says. "We see the sun moving across the sky, and we say no,no, no, the sun is not moving, it's we who move, we move, we. Science teaches us this. The earthmoves around the sun, we say. Nevertheless every morning we open our eyes and there's the sunmoving across the sky, east to west, every single day. It moves. We see it. I'm tired of denyingsuch evidence. The earth doesn't move. It's the sun that moves around the earth It's the windthat causes tides. If the earth moved we'd get dizzy and fall off. If the moon and sun cause tidesin oceans, why don't they cause tides in swimming pools and glasses of water? There's novariation in the microwave backgrounds. Why is this? Because we're at the center of the universe,that's why this is."303

96. In their humorous ways, the characters created by Rilke and DeLillo illustrate thereluctance of people to give up their belief, based solidly on the evidence of their senses, that theearth is at rest. The matter was not so humorous to some of the natural philosophers of the early17th century who were concerned that the Copernican theory be accepted. The most notoriousecclesiastical condemnation of a promoter of the Copernican theory was that of Galileo in 1633,when Galileo was 70 and one of the most accomplished and renowned scientists in the world. Thesentence followed the publication in 1632 of his dialogue on the "two chief world systems", that is,the Ptolemaic and Copernican.

97. The story has been exhaustively studied on all sides ever since, but the essence of it hasremained the same. Galileo was forced by the Inquisition to publicly renounce, on his knees, hisopinions on the validity and superiority of the Copernican system. The official sentence reads:"We say, pronounce, sentence, declare that you, the said Galileo, by reason of the matters adducedin trial, and by you confessed as above, have rendered yourself in the judgment of this HolyOffice vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having believed and held the doctrine --whichis false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures -- that the Sun is the center of the

302 from Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, 1910, translation from German to English, TheNotebooks of MalteLaurids Brigge, 1982, by Stephen Mitchell, p. 172-175.303 Don DeLillo, Ratner's Star, 1976, p. 87-88.

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world and does not move from east to west, and that the Earth moves and is not the center of theworld; and that an opinion may be held and defended as probable after it has been declared anddefined to be contrary to Holy Scripture; and that consequently you have incurred all thecensures and penalties imposed and promulgated in the sacred canons and other constitutions,general and particular, against such delinquents. From which we are content that you beabsolved, provided that first, with a sincere heart, and unfeigned faith, you abjure, curse, anddetest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholicand Apostolic Roman Church in the form to be prescribed by us."304 Galileo duly recanted, andwas placed under a kind of benign house arrest for the rest of his life. The Index of the Churchwas subsequently made to forbid "all writings which affirm the motion of the earth."305

98. White says: "Doubtless many will exclaim against the Roman Catholic Church for this:but the simple truth is that Protestantism was no less zealous against the new scientific doctrine.All branches of the Protestant Church -- Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican --vied with each other indenouncing the Copernican doctrine as contrary to Scripture; and, at a later period, the Puritansshowed the same tendency. Said Martin Luther [for example]: "People gave ear to an upstartastrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sunand the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of allsystems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; butsacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." Whiteconcludes that such consequences are to be expected when "the Church alone is empowered topromulgate scientific truth or direct university instruction."306

99. Andrew White assisted Ezra Cornell in founding Cornell University, and Whiteexplains: "We had especially determined that the institution should be under the control of nopolitical party and of no single religious sect, and with Mr. Cornell's approval I embodiedstringent provisions to this effect in the charter."307 In this day of widespread non-sectariancolleges and universities, it is largely forgotten now many of our institutions of higher learningformerly were denominational, and how closely others were tied to their state legislatures. Theplan of Cornell and White led to a bitter struggle with numerous ecclesiastical authorities andmembers of the State Legislature of New York, some of whom accused White and Cornell ofatheism, then of infidelity, then (backing off) of "indifferentism". It was this struggle whichimpelled White to compose his work on the warfare of science with theology. White was himselfa Christian, and attributed the conflict between science and theology to the ineptitude oftheologians in scientific matters, rather than to some deficiency in the Christian religion. Wehave seen and are still seeing in our own day in some places in the U.S.A. similar conflicts over theteaching of Darwinian evolutionary theory in public schools and in some denominationalcolleges.

100. Ptolemy, who believed that the earth stands still at the center of the universe onphysical rather than theological grounds, wrote on geography as well as astronomy. His

304 Quoted by Giorgio de Santillana on p. xlvii-xlviii of the preface to his version, Dialogue on the GreatWorld Systems, 1953, of the Thomas Salusbury translation (1661) of Galileo's Dialogo dei Massimi Sistemi,1632.305 Andrew White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 1896, p. 144.306 ibid., p. 126, 133.307 ibid., p. vi.

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Geographia was very influential in antiquity. Ptolemy also wrote on astrology. In the EuropeanMiddle Ages, Ptolemy was perhaps most widely known for his work on astrology called Mathematikes tetrabiblou syntaxeos, or simply the Tetrabiblos or Quadripartitum; that is, The four-book mathematical treatise, or The Four Books. In Book II, Ptolemy says that astronomicalprediction (meaning what we would call astrological prediction) is divided into two great parts,and: "... since the first and more universal is that which relates to whole races, countries, andcities, which is called general, and the second is that which relates to individual men, which iscalled genethlialogical, we believe it fitting to treat first of the general division, because suchmatters are naturally swayed by greater and more powerful causes than are particular events. Andsince weaker natures always yield to the stronger, and the particular always falls under thegeneral, it would by all means be necessary for those who purpose an inquiry about a singleindividual long before to have comprehended the more general considerations."308 Thus Ptolemyheld what we have called omen astrology, and what he calls general astrology, to be primary. Thiskind of astrology was old in his own time. On the other hand, he may be regarded as the first greatsystematizer of individual or personal astrology. He was, as it were, the Newton of horoscopicastrology.

101. It is hard for many modern astronomers to understand how Ptolemy could write a workon astronomy which even by modern standards is a tremendous scientific achievement, and also,later, a book on personal astrology which elaborates on the influence of the positions of theplanets, moon and sun at the birth of a person on the person's character and fate, as well as theastrologically based Harmonica, which had a great influence on Kepler's work. Here, chosen notquite at random (based on horoscopes of myself), is a sample from Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos: "Jupiterallied with Mercury in honourable positions makes his subjects learned, fond of discussion,geometricians, mathematicians, poets, orators, gifted, sober, of good intellect, good in counsel,statesmen, benefactors, managers, good-natured, generous, lovers of the mob, shrewd, successful,leaders, reverent, religious, skillful in business, affectionate, lovers of their own kin, well broughtup, philosophical, dignified. In the opposite positions he makes them simple, garrulous, prone tomake mistakes, contemptible, fanatical, religious enthusiasts, speakers of folly, inclined tobitterness, pretenders to wisdom, fools, boasters, students, magicians, somewhat deranged, butwell informed, of good memory, teachers, and pure in their desires."309

102. On the question of free will, Ptolemy says: "... we should not believe that separateevents attend mankind as the result of the heavenly cause as if they had been originally ordainedfor each person by some irrevocable divine command and destined to take place by necessitywithout the possibility of any other cause whatever interfering. Rather is it true that the movementof the heavenly bodies, to be sure, is eternally performed in accordance with divine, unchangeabledestiny, while the change of earthly things is subject to a natural and mutable fate, and in drawingits first causes from above it is governed by chance and natural sequence." (ibid.,

p. 23.) Lynn Thorndike, evidently commenting on this passage, observes that for Ptolemy, "notall predictions are inevitable and immutable; this is true only of the motion of the sky itself andevents in which it is exclusively concerned."310 Ptolemy is quite precise about it: what is strictly

308 Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos (c. 150 A.D.), translated by F. H. Robbins, 1940, p. 117, 119.

309 ibid., p. 351, 353. I leave you, the reader, to decide which of these is applicable.310 Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923-1958, v. 1, 1923, p. 112.

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deterministic in astrology is the motions of celestial objects. Predictions about anything else arenot infallibly correct, but nevertheless may be very useful. He says: "I think, just as withprognostication, even if it be not entirely infallible, at least its possibilities have appeared worthy ofthe highest regard, so too in the case of defensive practice [acts meant to contravene predictions],even though it does not furnish a remedy for everything, its authority in some instances at least,however few or unimportant, should be welcomed and prized and regarded as profitable in noordinary sense."311

103. Neugebauer notes that Ptolemy used the older Babylonian methods of interpolationfor computing positions of the planets, sun and moon in the Tetrabiblos_, rather than the bettertrigonometric methods which he had already given in the Almagest. About judicial astrology ingeneral, Neugebauer observes that after the time of Ptolemy: "While the scientific astronomicalliterature became increasingly sterile the astrological interest remained as active as ever. Forastronomy proper this had no beneficial effect. Astrology is a dogmatic discipline, following astrict ritual in combining certain data without worrying how reliable these data were. This attitudeis reflected in the fact that astrologers for centuries used arithmetical methods, e.g. for planetarypositions or for determining the length of daylight, which were long superseded by more accurateprocedures. No astrologer cared about the reliability of the basic parameters of his planetary tables.... Hence one may well say that at no stage in the development of astronomy did astrology have anydirect influence, beneficial or otherwise, on astronomy beyond the fact that it provided a securemarket for treatises and tables and this contributed to the survival of works which otherwise wouldhardly have reached us."312 This may be true of astrology in the narrow sense, horoscopicastrology, but it has been one of our principal contentions that in the larger sense of astrology, aswe have more or less defined it earlier, astrology did influence astronomy, and indeed one mustexert caution in speaking of the two as separate before the 17th century. For example, it would bedifficult, I think, to support contentions that Ptolemy did astrology just for the money, or that hewasn't very bright in dealing with planets and stars, or that he was merely superstitious, or forsome other such summary reasons.

3 1 1 Ptolemy, ibid., p.31.3 1 2 Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Astronomy, 1975, Part Two, p. 942-943.

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Appendix to Chapter 4

Diodorus Siculus (of Sicily), Bibliotheca Historica, Book II, 28:29-31

Translated by C. H. Oldfather, 1985 (Loeb Classics)Diodorus lived c.100-30 B.C.E.

But to us it seems not inappropriate to speak briefly of the Chaldeans of Babylon andof their antiquity, that we may omit nothing which is worthy of record. Now the Chaldeans,belonging as they do to the most ancient inhabitants of Babylonia, have about the sameposition among the divisions of the state as that occupied by the priests of Egypt; for beingassigned to the service of the gods they spend their entire life in study, their greatest renownbeing in the field of astrology. But they occupy themselves largely with soothsaying as well,making predictions about future events, and in some cases by purifications, in others bysacrifices, and in others by some other charms they attempt to effect the averting of evilthings and the fulfillment of the good. They are also skilled in the soothsaying by the flight ofbirds, and they give out interpretations of both dreams and portents. They also show markedability in making divinations from the observations of the entrails of animals, deeming that inthis branch they are eminently successful.

The training which they receive in all these matters is not the same as that of theGreeks who follow such practices. For among the Chaldeans the scientific study of thesesubjects is passed down in the family, and son takes it over from father, being relieved of allother services in the state. Since, therefore, they have their parents for teachers, they notonly are taught everything ungrudgingly but also at the same time they give heed to theprecepts of their teachers with a more unwavering trust. Furthermore, since they are bred inthese teachings from childhood up, they attain a great skill in them, both because of theease with which youth is taught and because of the great amount of time which is devoted tothis study.

Among the Greeks, on the contrary, the student who takes up a large number ofsubjects without preparation turns to the higher studies only quite late, and then, afterlabouring upon them to some extent, gives them up, being distract ed by the necessity ofearning a livelihood; and but a few here and there really strip for the higher studies andcontinue in the pursuit of them as a profit -making business, and these are always trying tomake innovations in connection with the most important doctrines instead of following the inthe path of their predecessors. The result of this is that the barbarians, by sticking to thesame things always, keep a firm hold on every detail, while the Greeks, on the other hand,aiming at the profit to be made out of the business, keep founding new schools andwrangling with each other over the most important matters of speculation, bring it about thattheir pupils hold conflicting views, and that their minds, vacillating throughout their lives andunable to believe anything at all with firm conviction, simply wander in confusion. It is at anyrate true that, if a man were to examine carefully the most famous schools of thephilosophers, he would find them differing from one another to the uttermost degree andmaintaining opposite opinions regarding the most fundamental tenets.

30. Now, as the Chaldeans say, the word is by its nature eternal, and neither had a firstbeginning nor will at a later term suffer destruction; furthermore, both the disposition and theorderly arrangement of the universe have come about by virtue of a divine providence, andtoday whatever takes place in the heavens is in every instance brought to pass, not ahaphazard nor by virtue of any spontaneous action, but by some fixed and firmly determineddivine decision. And since they have observed the stars over a long period of time and havenoted both the movements and the influences of each of them with greater precision thanany other men, they foretell to mankind many things that will take place in the future. Butabove all in importance, they say, is the study of the influence of the five stars known asplanets, which they call "Interpreters" when speaking of them as a group, but if referring tothem singly, the one named Cronus by the Greeks, which is the most conspicuous andpresages more events an d such as are greater in importance than the others, they call thestar Helios [Sun], whereas the other four they designate as the star of Ares [Mars], Aphrodite[Venus], Hermes [Mercury], and Zeus [Jupiter], as do our astrologers. The reason why theycall them "Interpreters" is that whereas all other stars are fixed and follow a single circuit ina regular course, these alone, by virtue of following each its own course, point out futureevents, thus interpreting to mankind the design of the gods. For sometimes by their risings,sometimes by their settings, and again by their colour, the Chaldeans say, they give signs ofcoming events to such a are willing to observe them closely; for at one time they show forthmighty storms of winds, at another excessive rains or heat, at times the appearance ofcomets, also eclipses of both sun and moon, and earthquakes, and in a word all thecondition which owe their origin to the atmosphere and work both benefits and harm, notonly to whole peoples or regions, but also to kings and to persons of private station.

Under the course in which these planets move are situated, according to them, thirtystars, which they designate as "counseling gods"; of these one half oversee the regionsabove the earth and the other half those beneath the earth, having under their purview theaffairs of mankind and likewise those of the heavens; and every ten days one of the starsabove is sent as a messenger, so to speak, to the stars below, and again in like manner ofthe stars below the earth to those above, and this movement of their is fixed anddetermined by means of an orbit which is unchanging for ever. Twelve of these gods, theysay, hold chief authority, and to each of these the Chaldeans assign a month and one of thesigns of the zodiac, as they are called. And through the midst of these signs, they say, boththe sun and moon and the five planets make their course, the sun completing his cycle in ayear and the moon traversing her circuit in a month.

31. Each of the planets, according to them, has its own particular course, and its velocitiesand periods of time are subject to change and variation. These stars it is which exert thegreatest influence for both good and evil upon the nativity of men; and it is chiefly from thenature of these planets and the study of them that they known what is in store for mankind.And they have made predictions, they say, not only to numerous other kings, but also toAlexander, who defeated Darius, and to Antigonus and Seleucus Nicator who afterwardsbecame kings, and in all their prophecies they are thought to have hit the truth. But of thesethings we shall write in detail on a more appropriate occasion. Moreover, they also foretell tomen in private station what will befall them, and with such accuracy that those who havemade trial of them marvel at the feat and believe that it transcends the power of man.

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Flavius Josephus (37-98 C. E.), Antiquit ies of the Jews

Beyond the circle of the zodiac they designate twenty-for other stars, of which onehalf, they say, are situated in the northern parts and one half in the southern, and of thesethose which are visible they assign to the world of the living, while those which are invisiblethey regard as being adjacent to the dead, and so they call them "Judges of the Universe."And under all the stars hitherto mentioned the moon, according to them, takes her way,being nearest the earth because of her weight and completing her course in a very briefperiod of time, not by reason of her great velocity, but because her orbit is so short. Theyalso agree with the Greeks in saying that her light is reflected and that her eclipses are dueto the shadow of the earth. Regarding the eclipse of the sun, however, they offer theweakest kind of explanation, and do not presume to predict it or to define the times of itsoccurrence with any precision. Again, in connection with the earth they make assertionsentirely peculiar to themselves, saying that it is shaped like a boat and hollow, and they offermany plausible arguments about both the earth and al other bodies in the firmament, a fulldiscussion of which we feel would be alien to our history. This point, however, a man mayfittingly maintain, that the Chaldeans have of all men the greatest grasp of astrology, andthat they have bestowed the greatest diligence upon the study of it. But as to the number ofyears which, according to their statements, the order of the Chaldeans has spent on thestudy of the bodies of the universe, a man can scarcely believe them; for they reckon that,down Alexander’s crossing over into Asia, it has been four hundred and seventy-threethousand years, since they began in early times to make their observations of the stars.

Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.E. – 50 C.E.), De Abrahamo, 68-71

Translated by F. H. Colson, 1984 (Loeb Classics)

The Chaldeans appear beyond all other men to have devoted themselves to the study ofastronomy and of genealogies; adapting things on earth to things sublime, an d alsoadapting things of heaven to things on earth, and like people who, availing themselves ofthe principles of music, exhibit a most perfect symphony as existing in the universe by thecommon union and sympathy of the parts for another, which through s eparated as to place,are not disunited in regard of kindred. These men, then, imagined that this world which webehold was the only world in the existing universe, and was either God himself, or else that itcontained within itself God, that is, the soul of the universe. Then, having erected fate andnecessity into gods, they filled human life with excessive impiety, teaching men that with theexception of those things which are apparent there is no other cause whatever of anything,but that it is the periodical revolutions of the sun, and moon, and other stars, whichdistribute good and evil to all existing beings.

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Excerpts from Book 1

Translated by William Whiston, 1737

Chapter 2, 67-71. Now Adam, who was the first man, and made out of the earth, (forour discourse must now be about him,) after Abel was slain, and Cain fled away, on accountof his murder, was solicitous for posterity, and had a vehement desire of children , he beingtwo hundred and thirty years old; after which time he lived other seven hundred, and thendied. He had indeed many other children, but Seth in particular. As for the rest, it would betedious to name them; I will therefore only endeavor to give an account of those thatproceeded from Seth. Now this Seth, when he was brought up, and came to those years inwhich he could discern what was good, became a virtuous man; and as he was himself of anexcellent character, so did he leave children behind him who imitated his virtues. All theseproved to be of good dispositions. They also inhabited the same country withoutdissensions, and in a happy condition, without any misfortunes falling upon them, till theydied. They also were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned withthe heavenly bodies, and their order. And that their inventions might not be lost before theywere sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at onetime by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, theymade two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone: they inscribed their discoveries onthem both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stonemight remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that therewas another pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Siriad to thisday.

Chapter 3, 104-108. Now when Noah had lived three hundred and fifty years afterthe Flood, and that all that time happily, he died, having lived the number of nine hundredand fifty years. But let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, andwith the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or makethe shortness of our lives at present an argument, that neither did they attain to so long aduration of life, for those ancients were beloved of God, and [lately] made by G od himself;and because their food was then fitter for the prolongation of life, might well live so great anumber of years: and besides, God afforded them a longer time of life on account of theirvirtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, whichwould not have afforded the time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they hadlived six hundred years; for the great year is completed in that interval. Now I have forwitnesses to what I have said, all those that have written Antiquities, both among the Greeksand barbarians; for even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian History, and Berosus, whocollected the Chaldean Monuments, and Mochus, and Hestieus, and, besides these,Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phoenician History, agree to what Ihere say: Hesiod also, and Hecatseus, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus; and, besides these,Ephorus and Nicolaus relate that the ancients lived a thousand years. But as to thesematters, let every one look upon them as he thinks fit.

Chapter 8, 166-168. For whereas the Egyptians were formerly addicted to different

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Flavius Josephus (37-98 C. E.), Antiquit ies of the Jews

customs, and despised one another's sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry onewith another on that account, Abram conferred with each of them, a nd, confuting the

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reason ings they made use of, every one for their own practices, demonstrated that suchreasonings were vain and void of truth: whereupon he was admired by them in thoseconferences as a very wise man, and one of great sagacity, when he discoursed on anysubject he undertook; and this not only in understanding it, but in persuading other menalso to assent to him. He communicated to them arithmetic, and delivered to them thescience of astronomy; for before Abram came into Egypt they were unacquainted with thoseparts of learning; for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from thence tothe Greeks also.

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Chapter 5. Stoics, Kepler, and Evaluations

1. Even Kepler, who lived from 1571 to 1630, and indisputably was one of the founders ofmodern astronomy and physics, even he cast horoscopes, although he was opposed to much ofthe astrology of his time. He called popular astrology "a dreadful superstition" and "asortilegious monkey-play". (Sortilege is prophesying by randomly casting or drawing "lots",using pebbles, dice, etc., and interpreting the results.) Many have tried to apologize for Kepler'sastrology. For example, Arthur Koestler, the novelist and essayist, claims that Kepler "started hiscareer with the publication of astrological calendars and ended it as Court Astrologer to the Dukeof Wallenstein. He did it for a living, with his tongue in his cheek." "In a typical outburst,"Koestler says, "he wrote: 'A mind accustomed to mathematical deduction, when confronted withthe faulty foundations [of astrology] resists a long, long time, like an obstinate mule, untilcompelled by beating and curses to put its foot into that dirty puddle.'" Still, as Koestlercontinues, while Kepler "despised these crude practices, and despised himself for having toresort to them, he at the same time believed in the possibility of a new and true astrology as anexact empirical science".313

2. Kepler wanted not to abolish astrology, but to reform it. He wrote several short treatisesspecifically on astrology, and referred to it, sometimes extensively, in his large major works. AsGerard Simon emphasizes, Kepler regarded astrology -- a reformed astrology -- as a legitimatebranch of his science. Simon says: "Kepler did not consider his astrological theories as lessimportant or less true than those which he announced in optics, astronomy or cosmology: in hiseyes, each of these are dedicated to the investigation of a perfectly homogeneous field of reality,that of the secrets of nature."314 Judith V. Field, in her evaluation of Kepler's astrology says:"Astrological harmony is ... an integral part of Kepler's work as it is of Ptolemy's .... Kepler'sconcern with astrology is not peripheral to his cosmological theories, and there can be no doubtthat it grossly misrepresents his attitude to astrology to suggest that he saw it primarily as a way ofmaking money."315 One of Kepler's treatises on astrology carries the motto "A warning to certainTheologians, Physicians and Philosophers ... that, while justly rejecting the stargazers'superstitions, they should not throw out the child with the bathwater". Elsewhere Kepler says:"That the sky does something to man is obvious enough; but what it does specifically remainshidden."

3. An outline of Kepler's reformed astrology has been given by the physicist WolfgangPauli. According to Kepler, individual souls have the ability to react to certain harmoniousproportions which correspond to specific rational divisions of a circle. In music, this ability isrevealed in our perception of euphony or consonance in certain musical intervals. Our souls aresaid to be able to react similarly to harmonious proportions of angles which rays of stellar lightmake with each other when they strike the earth. In the case of planets, these are the aspects oftraditional astrology, considered already by Ptolemy. In Kepler's view, these are what astrologyshould be based on. For Kepler, the effective angles between two rays coming from differentplanets are those that are found in the regular polygons, such as equilateral triangles, squares or

313 Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, 1959, p. 243.

314 Gerard Simon, Kepler astronome astrologue, 1979, p. 33.315 J.V.Field, "A Lutheran Astrologer: Johannes Kepler", Archive for History of Exact Sciences, v. 31, no. 3, p.189-272.

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hexagons, with which a plane surface can be covered without gaps ("tilings"), or in the "star"polygons developed by him in his Harmonice mundi.

4. Kepler holds that it is the light which comes from the other planets which producecertain effects in our souls, and therefore in our bodies.316 Furthermore, the earth itself has asoul, and the planets act on this soul as well. The earth, for Kepler, is a living thing. Paulidescribes Kepler's analogies: "As living bodies have hair, so does the earth have grass and trees,the cicadas being its dandruff; as living creatures secrete urine in a bladder, so do the mountainsmake springs; sulphur and volcanic products correspond to excrement, metals and rainwater toblood and sweat; the sea water is the earth's nourishment ... At the same time the anima terrae[soul of the earth] is also a formative power (facultasformatrix) in the earth's interior andexpresses, for example, the five regular bodies in precious stones and fossils It isimportant that in Kepler's view the anima terrae is responsible for the weather and also formeteoric phenomena. Too much rain, for instance, is an illness of the earth."317

5. Judith Field reports that Kepler believed that the theory that the weather was affected byplanetary aspects was amply confirmed by observation. He himself made many observations tothis effect. Field says: "Kepler's success in obtaining observational confirmation of his belief inthe efficacy of Aspects may be partly due to the subjectivity of the data, but another explanationalso presents itself: Aspects are so numerous that for any given change one could almost certainlyfind an appropriate recent Aspect. This objection in fact occurred to one of Kepler's regularcorrespondents, the physician Johann Georg Brengger, who mentioned it in a letter to Keplerdated 7 March 1608."318

6. As Pauli says, Keple r offers light as a physical cause for the effects of the planets onhuman beings, and indeed on other living creatures. Furthermore, he argues that properlyspeaking we should not say that the planets cause the effects they have on us, but rather that it isthe constitution of our souls, in their ability to respond to the planetary light, which causes theseeffects. Pauli notes what he takes to be a serious objection to Kepler's astrological theory, thatartificial light ought to produce astrological effects. 3 1 9 But of course one can think up reasonsfor distinguishing between artificial and planetary light. Or maybe Kepler would have agreedthat artificial light can produce astrological effects?

7. Gérard Simon observes that according to Kepler, it is possible to predict the future fromwhat takes place in the sky for three different reasons, one physical, another psychological, and athird metaphysical. The physical reason concerns the effect of light. Simon says these are for themost part meteorological according to Kepler, whereas Pauli emphasizes Kepler's belief in theeffect of light on living beings. The psychological reason results from emotions stirred in the soulsof living beings by the aspects and in the soul of the Earth by the planetary aspects. This also hasan effect on weather changes, but also on the actions of nations and their leaders, and on

316 The doctrine that light is a kind of force is an old idea, found, for example, among the neo-Platonists of

antiquity.

317 Wolfgang Pauli, "The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler", especially p. 176and p. 179-190, in The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955, by Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, translationby Priscilla Silz of Naturerklrung und Psyche, 1952.318 J. V. Field, Kepler's Geometrical Cosmology, 1988, p. 128-129.319 Pauli, ibid., p. 190.

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the destinies of individuals. Finally, the metaphysical reason, which Kepler allows is much moreconjectural, arises from the value of certain rare celestial phenomena as signs -- not as causes.Appearance of a comet, or above all of a new star, are phenomena of this kind. In the case of anew star, one may be in the presence of an indication of a mutation in universal history.

8. Kepler takes the psychological reason, based on planetary aspects, to be in the realm ofnature to the same degree as the physical reason is. The physical and psychological reasonsauthorize forecasting much more than prophecy, Simon says, and although Kepler reshaped thefoundations of such prediction, he never seems to have doubted the fundamental soundness of histechnique based on aspects. On the other hand, he wondered about the possibility of interpretingsigns which, if they are sent by God, can be understood only by prophets. Kepler doesn't excludethe possibility that there are providential signs in they heavens. Indeed, he observes that they areattested to in the Bible and other ancient writers. But he is skeptical about men being able tointerpret these signs correctly unless they are divinely inspired prophets. Kepler wanted tosubstitute, as far as he could, an astrology of causes for an astrology of signs. Astrology wouldthen become, he hoped, what it should never have ceased being, an applied branch of naturalscience. The astrological aspects result from the normal periodic motions of the planets. Fromtime to time, however, events occur in the heavens which are not periodic, and which thereforeappear to be unpredictable. If they can be considered as signs addressed to mankind, then anastrologer who undertakes to interpret them can no longer limit himself to describing theirphysical and psychological effects, but is led to trying to decipher their meaning. Thus the physicalproblem becomes metaphysical or theological. With the metaphysical problem, Kepler proceedswith caution, but proceeds nevertheless.320

9. In his work on the "new star" of 1604, De stella nova (1606), Kepler speculates onwhether or not the occurrence of a new star can be assigned to chance. Furthermore, in the sameyear, there was a "fiery trigon", that is, a conjunction of the three superior planets Mars, Jupiterand Saturn. Was it also a matter of chance that the new star appeared in the same year as this"grand conjunction"? For those of an Epicurean turn of mind, this was so. It was like a throw oftwo dice, one of which had the aggregation of the atoms of the new star on a face, and the other ofwhich had the grand conjunction on a face. Throw the dice enough times, and this pair of faceswill come up. The Aristotelians had a similar view. The formation of the atoms into a new starwas not a matter of chance for them, but the causes of the star and the causes of the grandconjunction had no connection with each other. The two causal series leading to these events wereconsidered to be independent. But then they coincided by chance. Kepler opposed both of theseviews. He argues that neither the individual events nor their coincidence were the result ofchance. This would be unworthy of God.321

10. Kepler could not abide chance events. He says: "What then is chance? It is themost detestable idol, which is nothing else than mistrust of the supreme and omnipotent God, andalso of what he has created, the absolutely perfect World, in which in place of a soul one takes ablind and unconsidered motion, and in place of a body an infinite chaos. It is impious to attributeto chance what belongs to God."322 Kepler will not admit a cosmology founded on chance, in

320 Gérard Simon, ibid., p. 35, 52-55, 79-80.

321 ibid., p. 52-80.)322Johannes Kepler, De stel la nova , quoted by Simon, ibid., p. 62.

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which the creation would have no goal or beauty, and would lose all meaning. Here is a source ofKepler's concern for astrology. To radically separate what happens in the heavens from whathappens on earth is to forget the perfection of the work of God and his solicitude for people. It is tomake the world silent, and to prevent us from witnessing its source. 3 2 3

1 1 . Kepler never stopped believing that the Earth has a Soul. Still, Ernst Cassirer recallsKepler's debate with Patrizzi over the motions of the planets: "[Patrizzi] declared that anyattempt on the part of mathematical astronomy to determine the course of the planets byinterlocking orbits, cycles, and epicycles was vain because in reality the planets were nothingother than animate beings, endowed with reason, who, just as appearance indicates, describe themost diverse, strangely tortuous paths through the liquid ether. It is characteristic of Kepler'smanner of thinking that he countered this conception primarily by a methodological argument --anargument he himself characterized as 'philosophical.' To resolve all seeming disorder into order,in every irregularity to seek the hidden rule: precisely this -- he stressed in opposing Patrizzi -- isthe basic principle of 'philosophical astronomy.'" 3 2 4

12. Cassirer quotes Kepler: "Among the adherents of a sound philosophy there is none whois not of this opinion, who would not congratulate himself and astronomy if he succeeded indisclosing the causes of error and distinguishing the true movements of the planets from theiraccidental orbits which rest only on sensory illusion, and in thus proving the simplicity andordered regularity of their orbits." Cassirer concludes: In these simple and profound words fromKepler's pamphlet in defense of Tycho Brahe, and in the concrete confirmation they soon receivedthrough Kepler's treatise on the movements of Mars, the planets were dethroned as the ancientgods of time and fate, and the general view of time and of the temporal process was transferredfrom the image-world of the mythical-religious imagination to the exact conceptual world ofscientific cognition." Nevertheless, Kepler believed that the planets, including the sun and earth,have souls, and are alive. A dissolution of this apparent discrepancy between Cassirer's analysisand Kepler's belief follows from the doctrine, espoused by Kepler, that the souls of planets areguided not by caprice or will or chance, but by laws or "hidden rules".

13. Simon admirably and enthusiastically summarizes the outlook of Kepler: "Nothing is leftto chance in this world which forms a perfectly coherent system. It is through and through crossedby a tightly woven network of proportions which are the mark of the worker on his work; whichare thus the enchantment by which he gives to himself the spectacle of his own glory. The cosmicharmonies make up the true hymn which the psalmist in his prescience lent to the universe, andwhich one beautiful day an inspired mathematician deciphered in the course of his astronomicalcontemplation Mathematical ratios are then the privileged and universal language which the stars,people and God simultaneously speak and understand. This is not astonishing since 'geometrybefore the birth of things was co-eternal with the divine spirit .... '"325

14. "An immense play of mirrors thus exists in an immemorial way between themacrocosm and the microcosm, the creation and the creature, the creation and the Creator, the

323 Simon, ibid., p. 61-63.

324 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 1953-1957, translation by Ralph Manheim of DiePhilosophie der Symbolischen Formen, 1923 -1929, v. 2 (1955, 1925), p. 139-140. 325Johannes Kepler, quoted bySimon from Harmonice mundi , IV, 1.

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creature and the Creator; and it is made possible by mathematics, because this is at the same timetheir common essence and their common reason. It is the only natural language, because it is theonly one in which Nature expresses itself. And it is necessary to take literally this idea ofexpression: Nature is not only full of meaning, but full of a meaning which is not hidden, whichon the contrary announces itself openly in the spectacle of the heavens each hour, each day,provided one knows the language in which it manifests itself. Far from being contingent like thelanguages of man, mathematics conceals and reveals the secret necessity of things. Because ofthis, it is a sacred although natural language, or rather sacred because natural; perhaps even theonly truly sacred language, because it is the only one which escapes from the culturalarbitrariness of the sign."

15. "Thus the heavens," Simon continues, "by the equilibrium of their proportions and theharmony of their motions, write a revelation as important and as worthy of confidence as that ofthe Bible. God speaks there his own language rather than putting himself within reach of man;and whoever knows how to understand it, has no need of any interpretation or any tradition topenetrate their [the heavens'] secret perfection. Far from being a profane curiosity, the desire toprobe the Mystery of the World arises from religious concern and religious quest; and when little bylittle its secrets reveal themselves, the meditation which they inspire led to prayer and the actionsof grace. Nothing is more foreign to the spirit of Kepler than to place, as we do today, astronomyamong the positive sciences stripped of all mystical connotation; on the contrary, it is for him ascience of the sacred."

16. One understands better by means of this, as Simon observes, Kepler's attitude withregard to astrology. Simon says: "For its status had nothing in common with what we confer on ittoday, we who have a tendency to place it rather in the sphere of magico-religious productions.What he reproaches the popular astrology of his time for is its lending to Nature, and therefore toGod, one of the arbitrary languages with which people express their passions, their interests andtheir anxieties; that is why he criticizes at length the traditional encodings, dominations of theplanets, divisions of the zodiac, and above all domifications of the themes by which one hassought to make the world speak according to artificial and naively anthropomorphic symbols. Tothis art of the charlatan, he opposes the science which results from mathematical knowledge ofthe harmonies and of the effect of the celestial configurations on terrestrial faculties and humansouls, both in their immediate activities and their later developments. It is not in projecting intothe world the cares and words of people, but in grasping the causal relations which are establishedbetween the sublunary and the supralunary that one can understand the effects of stars on earthlythings."326

17. Simon goes on to describe Kepler's aversion to applying astrology to profane activities-- harvests expected, projects under way, ambitions thwarted -- rather than for contemplating thework of the Creator. This was one of Kepler's objections to judicial astrology, that it was autilitarian and basely positivistic science, which usurped the place of a higher and purerdiscipline which concerned the sacred.

18. Kepler never gave up hope that astrology could be reformed and made into a genuinescience. "No man," he says, "should hold it to be incredible that out of the astrologers'

326Gérard Simon, ibid. , p. 440- 442.

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foolishness and blasphemies some useful and sacred knowledge may come, that out of the uncleanslime may come a little snail or mussel or oyster or eel, all useful nourishments; that out of a bigheap of lowly worms may come a silk worm, and lastly that in the evil-smelling dung, a busy henmay find a decent corn, nay, a pearl or a golden corn, if she but searches and scratches longenough."327

19. Simon says: "We can in no way compare Kepler's intellectual reactions with our own.Unlike us, Kepler could not but take astrology seriously, because if it is the mirror image ofastronomy it consequently has the same level of plausibility. Far from being completely resolved,the question of whether astrology was valid was then still quite a pertinent one. Again, unlike us,who would be inclined to associate astrology with magico -religious thought, and astronomy withpositivism, for Kepler it is astrology that is the profane utilitarian activity, while astronomy is thescience of the sacred, the science of Creation the idea of a language of the World, of a book ofNature, is, as we see, found in all the systems of thought of the time, and reveal a very archaictype of reasoning. With a Kepler, with a Galileo, this language is transformed and becomesmathematical: nothing seems to be changed, but nevertheless everything is about to change."328

20. The less mystical Francis Bacon also thought that astrology was reclaimable. In the Deaugmentis scientarum (The Advancement of Learning) (1623), he says: "As for Astrology, it is sofull of superstition, that scarce anything sound can be discovered in it. Notwithstanding, I wouldrather have it purified than altogether rejected." He goes on to speak of a "Sane Astrology", withwhich one will be able to predict with a great degree of accuracy "floods, droughts, heats, frosts,earthquakes, irruptions of water, eruptions of fire, great winds and rains, the various seasons ofthe year, plagues, epidemics, diseases, plenty and dearth of grain, wars, seditions, schisms,transmigrations of peoples, and in short of all commotions or greater revolutions of things,natural as well as evil."329 Cameron goes on to observe that Bacon announces that once thefoundations of "Sane Astrology" are established, one will be able to predict such things as whatseasons will be especially dangerous for monks and courtiers, or more ominous for scholars thansoldiers. The idea of reforming astrology is not new: "So it is with all astrologers (says theTalmud): they see something but do not understand what they

see. "3 3 0

21. The physicist Paul Davies says: "Practical science proceeds apace, on the basis that theinfluence of, say, Jupiter on the motion of a motor car is less than any instrument couldconceivably measure. However, when it comes to making observations, it is precisely theseminute forces which play the vital role. If it were not for the fact that some influence from Jupiterhad a detectable effect we could never know of its existence. The inescapable conclusion is that allobservation requires interaction, of some sort. When we see Jupiter, photons of sunlight reflectedfrom atoms in the Jovian atmosphere traverse the Earth's atmosphere and

327 Quoted by Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, 1959, p. 245.

328 Gérard Simon, "Kepler's Astrology: The Direction of a Reform", in Kepler, Four Hundred Years, 1975,edited by Arthur Beer and Peter Beer, p. 447-448.329 Quoted from Bacon's De augmentis scientarum, 1623, by Don Allen Cameron in The Star-CrossedRenaissance, 1941,p. 152.330Rashi, Commentaries on the Pentateuch, Numbers, quoted in Leo Rosten's Treasury of Jewish Quotations, 1971, p.106.

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impinge on cells in the retina where they dislodge electrons from the atoms therein. This merestbrush of a disturbance sets up a tiny electric signal which, when amplified and propagated to thebrain, delivers the sensation 'Jupiter'. It follows that, through this chain, our brain cells are linkedby electromagnetic forces to the atmosphere of Jupiter. If the chain of interaction is extended byincorporating telescopes, our brains can couple to the surfaces of stars billions of light yearsaway." Interactions are not one-way.

22. Davies continues: "An important feature of all types of interaction is that if one systemdisturbs another, thereby registering its existence, then there will be an inevitable reaction backon the first system, which in turn disturbs it in order to get any information at all [about aphysical system], some sort of influence must pass from object to observer, though its reactionmay be utterly negligible for practical purposes. In the case of Jupiter, it would be invisible if itwere not for its illumination by sunlight. This same sunlight which, when reflected, stimulatesour retinas, also reacts on Jupiter by exerting a tiny pressure on its surface. (Sunlight pressureleads to a noticeable and spectacular effect by producing the tails of comets.) Thus, we do not,strictly, see the 'real' Jupiter, but one disturbed by light pressure. Similar reasoning can beapplied to all our observations of the world about us. We can never, even in principle, observethings, only the interaction between things. Nothing can be seen in isolation, for the very act ofobservation must involve coupling of some sort."331 As far as I know, astrologers do not casthoroscopes for the planets themselves.

23. But what about Kepler's belief that the planets (including the sun and moon) have souls?This too is ancient idea, as is the idea that the universe itself has a soul. In the third section of thesecond of his Enneads, the philosopher Plotinus (205-270 A.D.) begins by ridiculing the idea thatthe stars _cause_ events to come to pass. Countless myriads of living beings continue to be born,he says. How can one think that the stars can minister to every single one of these people -- to makethem famous or obscure, rich or poor, lascivious or chaste? "What kind of life is this for the stars,"he says, "how could they possibly handle a task so huge?"

24. Still, Plotinus says, stars do announce the future, evidently taking this to be a factattested to by experience. How can this happen? Plotinus's answer is that the stars are signs, byvirtue of the fact that everything is related to everything else. He says: "We may think of the starsas letters perpetually being inscribed on the heavens or inscribed once for all and yet moving asthey pursue the other tasks allotted to them: upon these main tasks will follow the quality ofsignifying, just as the one principle underlying any living unit enables us to reason from memberto member, so that for example we may judge of character and even of perils and safeguards byindications in the eyes or in some other part of the body. If these parts of us are members of awhole, so are we: in different ways the one law applies. All teems with symbol; the wise man isthe one who in any one thing can read another, a process familiar to all of us in not a fewexamples of everyday experience. But what is the comprehensive principle of co-ordination?Establish this and we have a reasonable basis for the divination, not only by stars but also by birdsand other animals, from which we derive guidance in our varied concerns."332

331 Paul Davies, Oth er Wo r ld s , 1980, p. 56-7.332 Plotinus, Th e S i x Enn ea d s , translated by Stephen MacKenna, 1921-1930, reprinted 1952, p. 44.

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25. Plotinus describes "the comprehensive principle of coordination" as follows: "All thingsmust be joined to one another, not only must there be in each individual part what is well called asingle united breath of life but before them, and still more, in the All. One principle must makethe universe a single complex living creature, one from all; and just as in individual organismseach member undertakes its own particular task, so the members of the All, each individual one ofthem, have their individual work to do; this applies even more to the All than to particularorganisms, in so far as the members of it are not merely members but wholes, and more importantthan the members of particular things. Each one goes forth from one single principle and does itsown work, but they also co-operate one with another; for they are not cut off from the whole.They act on and are affected by others; one comes up to another, bringing it pain or pleasure.Their going out has nothing random or casual about it. Something else proceeds again from these;and something else in succession from that, according to the order of nature."333 E. R. Dodds saysof this passage: "Plotinus wrote an essay to show that while in virtue of the universal_sympatheia_ the stars may indicate the future, they cannot determine it --and when shortlyafterwards he died of an unpleasant disease, the astrologers saw in it the vengeance of theoffended star-demons."334

26 James Lovelock expounded a theory of Earth as a living being, regulated by the lives onit.335 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan say: "Gaia, the superorganismic system of all life on Earth,hypothetically maintains the composition of the air and the temperature of the planet's surface,regulating conditions for the continuation of life ....................On earth the environment has beenmade and monitored by life as much as life has been made and influenced by the environment."336

For Plotinus, as for others in antiquity, the whole universe is a living being, although, to be sure,the number of scientific details of certain kinds encompassed in their theories was much smallerthan nowadays.

27. Earlier than Plotinus, Plato had said in his Timaeus: "All this, then, was the plan of thegod who is for ever [the Demiurge, the Creator] for the god who was sometime to be [theUniverse]. According to this plan he made it smooth and uniform, everywhere equidistant fromits centre, a body whole and complete, with complete bodies for its parts. And in the centre he seta soul and caused it to extend throughout the whole and further wrapped the body round with soulon the outseide; and so he established one world alone, round and revolving in a circle, solitarybut able by means of reason of its excellence to bear itself company, needing no otheracquaintance or friend but sufficient to itself. On all these accounts the world which he broughtinto being was a blessed god."337

28. On the basis of the Timaeus, the Laws and other writings of Plato, Cornford comments:"The visible universe is a living creature, having soul (psyche) in body and reason (nous) in soul. Itis called a god in the same sense in which the term is applied to the stars, planets, and Earth --the'heavenly gods'. All these gods are everlasting, coeval with time itself; though theoretically

3 3 3 Plotinus, translation by A. H. Armstrong of the Enneads, 1966, v. 2, p. 71.334E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, Some Aspects of Religious Experience from MarcusAurelius to Constantine, 1968, p. 15.335 James lovelock, Ages of Gaia, A Biography of Our Living Earth, 1988336 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Micro-cosmos, Four Billion Years of Evolution from OurMicrobialAncestors, 1986, p. 265.337 Plato, Timaeus, translated by Francis Cornford in Plato's Cosmology, 1937, p. 58 of reprint of 1957.

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dissoluble, because composite of reason, soul, and body, they will never actually be dissolved.Man is also composed of reason, soul, and body; but his soul will be dissolved back into theelements, and the two lower parts of his soul are also mortal. Only the divine reason in him isimperishable. Thus there is a contrast between macrocosm and microcosm, but also an analogy,which runs all though the discourse. The world itself, like the heavenly gods and man, is divinebecause it contains the divine element, reason....... There is, then, in the soul and body of theuniverse a divine Reason analogous to man's; and we shall find that the unchanging movement of itsthought is symbolised, or even visibly embodies, in the circular revolutions of the heavenly godsand of the universe as a whole."338

29. Thus according to Plato, not only is the whole universe alive, but so are Earth, Sun,Moon and the other planets. However, this doctrine is also older than Plato, probably much older.Still, according to Pliny, "Hipparchus can never be sufficiently praised for having better thananyone else proved the kinship of the stars with man and that our souls are part of the heavens."Hipparchus flourished about 160-1 25 B.C.E. He was one of the great astronomers of antiquity.He is credited, among other things, with having discovered the precession of the equinoxes; withhaving compiled the first catalog of stars using a system of coordinates; with having compiled atable of chords of circles (not the musical kind), thus advancing trigonometry; and with havingestablished a system of latitude and longitude for locating positions on earth.

30. The Stoics too believed that the universe is a living being. They extrapolated theirbiological theories to the whole cosmos. David Hahm comments: "This procedure rests on thedeep conviction that the cosmos is a living animal. This idea cannot be traced to a specificphilosophical predecessor, but was a conviction rooted in the consciousness of the Greek people, aswell as of other ancient peoples. Though philosophy, especially in the late fourth century,shunned this idea in its literal sense, it could not, or would not, uproot this fundamental outlookfrom the Greek mind."339 Plato develops the idea in the Timaeus, but treats it as an explanatorymyth rather than a scientific theory in the sense, say, of Aristotle. Aristotle himself treats suchideas as kinds of analogy, or metaphor. Some of the Stoics, it appears, took the conception forliteral truth: the universe is alive, sensitive, intelligent, and has a material soul.

31. Samuel Angus says: "Because [for Stoics] one spirit pulsated in the whole life of theuniverse there obtained a mysterious 'sympatheia of the whole,' by means of which man couldenter into fellowship with the cosmic process. The soul was a fragment of the celestial fires withwhich it maintained its kinship and to which it would return. Men are not merely members of oneanother, but of the whole cosmic order. The world is the image of God and man the image of theworld. Man as part of the cosmos is sympathetic with it as a whole This cosmic

harmony and universal sympathy were dear to the adherents of astral religion ...... It takes aneffort of the imagination fully to realize how this science-religion evoked such exalted feelingand moulded to virtue and beauty the lives of its adherents .... Cosmic emotion was not a torrent

338 Francis Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, 1937, p. 3 8-39 of the reprint of 1957.339 David Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology, 1977, p. 210.

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picturesquely rolling over precipices of ecstasy and exaltation: it was harnessed to moral life.'The love of heaven makes us heavenly,' was its credo." 340

32.The Stoics were apt to identify the soul of the universe with God. The Stoic Cornutussays: "Just as we ourselves are controlled by a soul, so the world possesses a soul holding ittogether, and the soul is designated God, primordially and ever-living and the source of all life."According to the Stoic Marcus Aurelius: "The world is one living organism with one substanceand one soul." Cleanthes maintains "there is one soul interpenetrating the whole cosmos, byparticipation in which we too become endowed with soul." Angus reports that the modernPlatonist T. Taylor says: "I confess that I am wholly at a loss to conceive what could induce themoderns to controvert the dogma that the stars and the whole world are animated, as it is anopinion of infinite antiquity, and is friendly to the most unperverted, spontaneous, and accurateconceptions of the human mind. Indeed the rejection of it appears to me to be just as absurd as itwould be in a maggot, if it were capable of syllogizing, to infer that man is a machine impelled bysome external force when he walks, because it never saw any animated reptile so large."341

33. Cicero presents arguments of the Stoics for the divinity of the universe, hence for theuniverse being alive and having a rational soul. This divinity is extended to the stars. Cicero says:"Having thus perceived the divinity of the world, we must also assign the same divinity to thestars, which are formed from the most mobile and the purest part of the aether, and are notcompounded of any other element besides; they are of a fiery heat and translucent throughout.Hence they too have the fullest right to be pronounced to be living beings endowed with sensationand intelligence .... Again the consciousness and intelligence of the stars is most clearly evincedby their order and regularity; for regular and rhythmic motion is impossible without design, whichcontains no trace of causal or accidental variation; now the order and eternal regularity of theconstellations indicates neither a process of nature, for it is highly rational, nor chance, for chanceloves variation and abhors regularity; it follows therefore that the stars move of their own free-willand because of their intelligence and divinity .... The regularity therefore in the stars, this exactpunctuality throughout all eternity notwithstanding the great variety of their courses, is to meincomprehensible without rational intelligence and purpose. And if we observe these attributes inthe planets, we cannot fail to enroll even them among the number of gods."342

34. Earlier, Aristotle put it this way: "On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer withconfidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different andseparate from them; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance fromthis world of ours The reasons why the primary body is eternal and not subject to increase ordiminution, but unaging and unalterable and unmodified, will be clear from what has been said toany one who believes in our assumptions. Our theory seems to confirm the phenomena and to beconfirmed by them. For all men have some conception of the nature of the gods, and all whobelieve in the existence of gods at all, whether barbarian or Greek, agree in allotting the highestplace to the deity, surely because they suppose that immortal is linked with immortal and

340 Samuel Angus, The Religious Quests of the Graeco-Roman World, A Study in the Historical Background ofEarly Christianity, 1929, p. 263-264, 270.341 ibid., p. 264-266.342 Cicero, De natura deorum, translated by H. Rackham, 1933, p. 161, 163, 175.

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regard any other supposition as impossible. If then there is, as there certainly is, anything divine,what we have just said about the primary bodily substance was well said. The mere evidence ofthe senses is enough to convince us of this, at least with human certainty. For in the whole range oftime past, so far as our inherited records reach, no change appears to have taken place either in thewhole scheme of the outermost heaven or in any of its proper parts. The name, too, of that bodyseems to have been handed down right to our own day from our distant ancestors who conceivedof it in the fashion we have been expressing. The same ideas, one must believe, recur in men'sminds not once or twice but again and again. And so, implying that the primary body is somethingelse beyond earth, fire, air, and water, they gave the highest place the name of aet her, derived fromthe fact that it 'runs always' for an eternity of time."343

35. Richard Lemay tells us: "The notion that the whole Universe was one single bodyanimated with a living soul was an essential part of the Platonic tradition of early medieval times,and still received much attention during William of Conches' lifetime." Among the 12th centurywriters who accepted this theory in some form, besides William of Conches, were Adelard ofBath, Ablard, Thierry of Chartres, Bernard Silvester amd Raymond of Marseilles. Some went sofar as to identify the World-Soul with the Holy Ghost. This was one of the opinions which Adelardand William of Conches were forced to recant, as being sacrilegious and heretical, althoughevidently Raymond of Marseilles and Bernard Silvester held the view unscathed. "Theologiansand mystics," Lemay says, are always opposed in principle to any non-theological or non-mysticalWeltanschauung", and William of Thierry's attacks on William of Conches are said by Lemay tohave "opened an important phase of the conflict of Natural Philosophy against Theology whichraged during the entire course of Scholasticism in the next three or four centuries."344

36. All of these authors were strongly influenced by a work of the Arabian astrologer AbuMa'shar (Albumasar) written in the 9th century C.E. in Baghdad, and translated into Latin in the12th century by European scholars. For Abu Ma'shar, the sky and planets are alive and govern theworld below. Abu Ma'shar, in turn, based his theory of animation of the planets and the existenceon certain works of Aristotle. For William of Conches, the animation of the sky and planets isexplained as a result of an act of God's Intelligence and Will, but for Abu Ma'shar, it is aconsequence of observed fact. Raymond of Marseilles, in the spirit of Aristotle, argued that theplanets move by themselves, what moves by itself must be alive, hence the planets are alive. Evenin William of Conches' work, there is a tendency toward a more physical and astrologicalinterpretation of the World-Soul, even an identification of it with our Sun, although William ofConches himself didn't accept this identification. More radical was the view of Raymond ofMarseilles. Lemay says: "To him the divine vigor infused in the World-Soul and animating thewhole Universe resided principally in the heavenly bodies. Astrology thus received a divine

343 Aristotle, De caelo (Peri ouranos, On the Heavens), translated by J. L. Stocks, 269b12-16, 270b1-23.

344 Richard Lemay, Abu Ma 'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century, The Recovery ofAristotle's Natural Philosophy through Arabic Astrology, 1962, p. 188, 193-194. Lemay recommends for a goodaccount of this conflict the work of Andrew D. White, _A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology inChristendom, 1896.

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sanction and an edifying character on which Raymond of Marseilles tarries with confidence and asense of satisfaction."345

37. Such ideas were also prevalent among certain writers during the European Renaissance,who had been inspired by the works of Plato, the Stoics, Plotinus, the Hermeticists, theKabbalists, and such medieval writers as Abu Ma'shar and Raymond of Marseilles. For example,Wayne Shumaker says that for Marsilio Ficino, "the whole world is in fact alive and filled withsoul."346 Also, the Hermeticists tell us again and again that the whole world is alive. From theHermetic work Asclepius: "If therefore the world is always a living animal -- was, and is, and willbe -- nothing in the world is mortal. Since every single part, such as it is, is always living and is ina world which is always one and always a living animal, there is no place in the world fordeath."347

38. Today, of course, the stars are considered by physicists and astronomers to be no morealive than, say, hydrogen atoms or electrons (however alive they may be). Correspondingly,while there is no lack today of astrologers and people who consult them, few astronomers nowbelieve there is anything worthwhile in astrology. Here are the concluding words of a book onastrology by two astronomers (not astrologers!): "We suspect the reasons for the current return toastrology, as well as other occult systems, range from simple curiosity to a desperate groping formiracle solutions so the real problems of life and society may be avoided. Any such massiverejection of rationality stemming from ignorance of the facts, however, should be a matter ofgrave concern. A scan of human history reveals that when a society begins to embrace suchirrational and fatalistic views, the end is close at hand. ... [We] propose that the rise of astrology ina culture does not cause that culture's undoing, but rather is a sign or symptom of the conditionsin a culture which betrays its inner weakness at that moment in history. So it was with classicalGreece, imperial Rome, and medieval Christianity. Ironically, it is perhaps the ultimateastrological synchronicity of all, and, in light of the current astrological renaissance in the West,represents a most chilling correspondence indeed. There was once a time in the younger and morecarefree days of human history when we could afford the luxury of an astrological dalliance. Butnow, faced with the awesome powers and problems of our technological adulthood, we can affordit no longer."348

39. Nancy Reagan, wife of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, says in her memoirs,concerning her attachment to astrology: "I should say, too, that the idea of consulting an astrologernever struck me as particularly strange. I used to look at my horoscope every morning as I read thepaper, although fifteen minutes later I usually forgot what it said. And although I'm far from a truebeliever, I do think there are certain characteristics that tend to be true of individuals born under aparticular sign I was born on July 6, which makes me a Cancer. It is often said that people bornunder the sign of Cancer are above all homemakers and nesters, which is exactly how I woulddefine myself. Cancers also tend to be intuitive, vulnerable,

3 4 5 Lemay, ibid., p. 149-157, 188-195.346Marsilio Ficino, De vita coelitus comparanda (Guiding One's Life by the Stars, or perhaps On Obtaining Lifefrom the Heavens), 1489.347 Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance, A Study in Intellectual Patterns, 1972, p. 122and 225.348 Rober B. Culver and Philip A. Ianna, The Gemini Syndrome, Star Wars of the Oldest Kind, 1979.

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sensitive, and fearful of ridicule -- all, of which, like it or not, I am. The Cancer symbol is thecrab shell! Cancers often present a hard exterior to the world. When they're hurt, Cancers respondby withdrawing into themselves. That's me, all right."349 Of course, all of these are commonhuman characteristics, not confined to people born under a particular sign of the zodiac.

40. We may compare this with the description given by E. R. Dodds: "The real vogue ofastrology appears to have begun in the second century B.C Why did it occur then and notsooner? The idea was by then no novelty, and the intellectual ground for its reception had longbeen prepared in the astral theology which was taught alike by Platonists, Aristotelians, andStoics, though Epicurus warned the world of its dangers. One may guess that its spread wasfavoured by political conditions: in the troubled half-century that preceded the Roman conquestof Greece it was particularly important to know what was going to happen. One may guess alsothat the Babylonian Greek who at this time occupied the Chair of Zeno [the Stoic] encouraged asort of "trahison des clercs" (the Stoa had already used its influence to kill the heliocentrichypothesis of Aristarchus which, if accepted, would have upset the foundations of astrology and ofStoic religion). But behind such immediate causes we may perhaps suspect something deeper andless conscious: for a century of more the individual had been face to face with his ownintellectual freedom, and not he turned tail and bolted from the horrid prospect -- better the rigiddeterminism of the astrological Fate than that terrifying burden of daily responsibility. Rationalmen like Panaetius and Cicero tried to check the retreat by argument, as Plotinus was to do later,but without perceptible effect; certain motives are beyond the reach of argument."350 This bringsto mind this quip: "When asked why he doesn't believe in astrology, the logician RaymondSmullyan responds that he's a Gemini, and Geminis never believe in astrology." 351

41. Of course, we still have defenders of astrology. For example, Rupert Gleadow says:"Usually astrology is thought by astronomers to be a delusion, but obviously it is not possible torecount the history of a subject while affecting towards it an attitude of superior disbelief. It will benecessary therefore to assume that the claims of both astronomy and astrology deserve to be takenseriouslyThe study of the future is a perfectly normal human practice, and has been almostuniversal on earth. Only the current fashion for materialism has decreed that predictions of thefuture must be impossible It is argued that a man cannot 'know' the future because it has notyet happened. This may appear to be good logic, yet the trend of the future is often regrettablyplain. It is sometimes quite easy to foresee the future, without needing to call on any specialfaculties [A] possible explanation of how there could be a correspondence between events in thezodiac and events on earth might be 'synchronicity'. By this word, coined by C. G. Jung, is meantthat every event -- in so far as it is produced not by one urgently over-riding force, but by variousapproximately equal but not quite constant or calculable forces -- is characteristic of the momentat which it occurs and of the interacting forces then in play."352

42. Underlying a rejection of astrology, there is a fundamental historical question we havealready touched on. If astrology is a farrago of mistakes and nonsense, how is that some people ofconsiderable intelligence (along with many not so gifted) have believed in it for more than

3 4 9 Nancy Reagan, My Turn, The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan, 1989, with William Novak, p. 50.350E. R. Dodds, Greeks and the Irrational, 1951, p. 245-246.3 5 1 Reported by John Paulos in his book Innumeracy 1988, p. 49.352Rupert Gleadow, Origin of the Zodiac, 1969, p. 15, 21,24.

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2000 years (or maybe more than 4000, starting from omen astrology), or at least thought there'ssomething in it if we could only find out what that something is? Pico della Mirandola, writing in1495, offered the following explanation: "How many people are immersed in a theory, are usedto reducing everything to it, and not because of a desire to explain everything by it, but becausethings really seem like that to them. What happens to them is like someone who walksimmersed in snow and to whom everything ends up appearing white....... like someone who lovesin vain and sees the face of his beloved in everything ....... So he who is a theologian, and nothingbut a theologian, takes everything back to divine causes; he who is a doctor takes everything backto corporal states, the physician [physicist?] to the natural principles of things, the mathematicianto numbers and figures, like the Pythagoreans. In the same way, as the Chaldeans were entirelyoccupied with the measurement of celestial movements and the observation of the positions of thestars ... all things were stars to them, and they willingly took everything back to the stars."353

43. Part of the force behind astrology stems from the astral religion which developed inantiquity, especially on the basis of works of Plato. Walter Burkert maintains that in Plato's laterwork, after the Republic , a double change can be detected. There is a strain of logical self-criticism which shakes the foundations of the theory of ideas. There is also a turning towardnature and natural philosophy. From this change there developed a formative force in the history ofreligion. The religion of transcendence finds a complement in the perceivable world, in visiblegods. This holds for the cosmos as a whole, and especially for the stars. The cosmos, according tothe later Plato, obeys unchangeable intelligible laws that are mathematically formulated.

44. Two bold conclusions resulted, says Burkert. First, the cosmos is eternal, since in manycenturies of observation no change has been detected. Nor do the mathematical laws admit change.The old cosmogonic hypothesis that the cosmos arose at some time and will decay at some time inthe future must be false. Secondly, mathematically exact movements are rational, hence thecosmos is rational. In the Laws the Athenian who speaks for Plato himself asserts that he learnedthis "not as a young man nor a long time ago." Plato had earlier criticized the system ofAnaxagoras on the grounds that although Anaxagoras introduced nous intelligence) as an agentwhich moves the cosmos, he embraced a mindless materialism in all the details. But later naturalphilosophy gained an intellectual, mathematical dimension in Plato's work. Thus naturalphilosophy enters into a surprising alliance with piety. The concept of the soul which hadpreviously been confined to the individual, as the subject of knowledge and moral decisions,received a new, cosmic status. The movement of the cosmos became of a psychic nature. Soul isdefined in a general way as that which moves itself. The living are distinguished by their ability tomove themselves, in contrast to what is dead and without souls. Soul as that which moves itself isprimary in relation to all bodies which are moved by something else. This holds for the wholecosmos as well as for an individual's mortal body.

45. Plato in the Laws repeatedly emphasizes this important turn in the history ofphilosophy, says Burkert. Plato says: "The situation has been entirely reversed since the dayswhen thinkers thought of the stars as without souls. Wonder, though, was awakened even then,

3 5 3 Quoted by Eugenio Garin in Astrology in the Renaissance, 1983, p. 89, translation ofLo Zodiaco della Vita,1976.

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and what now really holds was suspected by those who embarked on exactness: that in no waycould the stars as soulless things keep so precisely to marvelous calculations, if they did notpossess intelligence. Some even then were bold enough to venture this very proposition and theysaid that it was nous that had ordained everything in the sky. But these very men were deceivedabout the nature of the soul, namely that it is older than the bodies; they imagined it as youngerand thus so to speak ruined everything, nay even more themselves. But now, as we have said, thesituation is entirely reversed. It is no longer possible that any single mortal man will be god-fearing for long if he has not grasped these two principles mentioned, that the soul is the oldest

of everything which participates in coming-to-be (and that it is immortal, and that it rules over allbodies), and moreover (secondly) he must grasp, as has now been said many times, theintelligence of being which is in the stars, as mentioned, and in addition also the necessarypreliminary mathematical sciences."

46. Thus, says Burkert, astronomy became the foundation of religion (shades of CharlesDupuis!). The Epinomis of Philippos of Opus (often attributed to Plato) expounded this even moreenergetically. It takes seriously what is already hinted at in the Laws, the stars have claim to a realcult with sacrifices, prayers, and festivals. The most powerful account of the new philosophicalworld view, fundamental to all subsequent cosmos piety, had been presented earlier by Plato inhis Timaeus. This dialogue concerning the Universe, in which the spokesman is no longerSocrates but a fictitious Pythagorean from southern Italy, develops into a hymn on the animated,divine cosmos. Burkert says that for the later Plato: "The cosmos created after the model of the'perfect living being' is itself a living being with soul and mind. Its soul, the 'world soul', is aharmony of mathematical proportions which are manifested in the movements of the stars. Thestars are 'instruments of time'. Time itself, chronos, arose with the heavens in the image ofungenerated, timeless eternity, aion. The visible cosmos is perfect insofar as something corporealcan attain perfection. A second principle of necessity, the 'nurse of coming-to-be', also called space,is a determining agent in all that is corporeal .... Within this comprehensive god further visiblegods are created in accordance with the perfect model, the stars in the heavens. The fixed stars aredivine living beings which move for ever in the same way in the same place .... The earth aroundwhich they revolve is 'the first and oldest goddess within the heaven' In man himself Nous, thepower of intellectual comprehension, is planted as something divine, a daimon in man .... Thedaimon's purpose is 'to direct us upward from earth to kinship with heaven': the upright posturedistinguishes man, pointing him upwards; man is rooted in heaven, a 'plant of heaven' on earth."

47. "Returning to metempsychosis," Burkert continues, "it is said that each soul has its ownstar from which it has come and to which it will return." In the Timaeus, Plato says that theDemiurge created human souls "equal in number to the stars and assigned each soul to a star." Thenumber of all souls remains constant. The Nous in the world stands against necessity, ananke; itcan rationally persuade necessity but not annihilate it. In the Laws, however, an evil world soulappears which is engaged in an eternal struggle with the good world soul. "Since then," Burkertsays, "monistic and dualistic tendencies have been competing with each other in Platonism. Forall this, the Platonic project offers so much that is evident and intuitive that its enormous impactis not surprising. Never before had gods been presented in such manifest clarity .... Man is athome in a world which is the best possible; rigorous science and religious exaltation are the same.Cosmic religion and star religion are henceforth, especially in the

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Hellenistic Age, the dominant form of enlightened piety ...... The Stoics in particular wereresponsible for carrying this out in a detailed way; many of their equations became the commonproperty of all educated people down to the age of the Baroque: Zeus is the sky, Apollo the sun,Artemis the moon, Demeter the earth. The planets, which are less obvious to the layman, failed toattain a similar popularity; yet astrology, based on the calculation of their periods, became fromthe Late Hellenistic period onwards, a dominant spiritual force as a new kind of divination withscientific appeal. What was truly problematic about the success of cosmic religion, its connectionwith a specific stage of natural science that would later be superseded, led to an explosion onlysome two thousand years after Plato."354

48. Franz Strunz has written eloquently of the place of astrology and alchemy in humanculture. Their activities are grounded in a religiously mystic attitude, and in them are hidden "thedesire for a better world and the child's dream of the happiness of all mankind." In former times,especially in the Hellenistic era, astrology was astral or cosmic religion, and it encompassed whatwe now call astronomy, astrophysics, meteorology and geophysics. "It rules astronomy, it is notits maidservant." It permeated the forerunners of anthropology, medicine and chemistry, as wellas many religious views. In those times, Strunk maintains, astrology, alchemy and mysticismwere bound together and can only be understood as an organic whole. "Empirical astrology andalchemy are mysticism become practice and technology, although each imagines for itself worldpictures or philosophical myths..."

49. Mysticism is not a religion in itself, but a mode of religious life. It is characteristic ofmystic feeling that it flows into the measurelessness and boundlessness of the irrational andincomprehensible, where language and concepts become unsayable and ungraspable. Mysticsconsider with repugnance their earthly existence and their connections with the world and itsreality. They consider our times on earth to consist of difficult, burdensome passages to theheights, journeys through death in order to arrive at life. Every mystic harbors a denial of thereality of this world, which is apt to foster a disconsolate skepticism and pessimism about it. It is ina mystic mode, says Strunk, that astrologers and alchemists customarily worked. "They do notwork dispassionately toward pure knowledge, but obtain for themselves spiritual stability andirrationally established categories for making judgments such as thrive only in the atmosphere of themystic .... Astrologers and alchemists want a supernatural world which does not exist." In asimilar way, throughout the history of the natural sciences, up to our own day, we find analternation of mythologizing with rational criticism, and an antagonism between revelation andexperience permeating the natural sciences. "This is the key," Strunz says, "to an understanding ofthe history of human error. The spiritual power of sham miracles has always been greater than thedispassionate art of conceptual thought and proof, that leads men to a knowledge of things."355

50. The historian Franz Cumont states beautifully how astrology came to enchant so manypeople in later antiquity: "Astral divination was often a visionary's discipline. The theology onwhich it rests has as a fundamental doctrine the idea of a kinship of a soul which warms and

354 Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, 1985, p. 325-329, translation by John Raffan of GriechischeReligion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, 1977.

355 Franz Strunz, Astrologie, Alchemie, Mystik, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, 1928, p.11, 12, 14, 21, 321-322, and generally, p. 287-328.

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vivifies our mortal bodies with the eternal fires which illuminate the heavens. This conception,which, in all probability, was already held by the "Chaldeans", became that of their successorsand, in the 2nd century B.C., found in Hipparchus a convinced defender. Only this affinity with thestars permits the human spirit, an ignited essence descended from the ether, to know the nature ofthe radiant beings from which he has issued. The contemplation of the heavens becomestherefore a communion. Leaving its material envelope, reason raises itself to the choir of thesidereal gods and receives from them a revelation of their character and the causes of theirharmonious movements. It becomes the confidant of the stellar powers, who teach him thecosmic phenomena, the course and duration of their revolutions, which rule with numbersendowed with a suitable power .... But, above all, these mystics of the astral religion, who havedivined the secrets of the celestial spheres, acquire the power to dissipate the obscurity of thefuture; they arrive at "the science of future things," they prophesy events to come, as if they weregods. Astrology flatters itself that it can foresee the phenomena of nature and the careers ofhumans with the same certainty as the recurrence of eclipses. This learned divination is for itsadepts the queen of the sciences .... "356

51. This doesn't mean that Cumont thinks that the astrologers' theories were verified, orverifiable. In another of his books, he says: "There is something tragic in this ceaseless attempt ofman to penetrate the mysteries of the future, in this obstinate struggle of his faculties to lay holdon knowledge which evades his probe, and to satisfy his insatiable desire to foresee his destiny.The birth and evolution of astrology, that desperate error on which the intellectual labors ofcountless generations were spent, seems like the bitterest of disillusions. By establishing theunchangeable character of the celestial revolutions the Chaldeans imagined that they understoodthe mechanism of the universe, and had discovered the actual laws of life. The ancient beliefs inthe influence of the stars upon the earth were concentrated into dogmas of absolute rigidity. Butthese dogmas were frequently contradicted by experience, which ought to have confirmed them.Unable to bring themselves to deny the influence of the divine stars on the affairs of this world,they invented new methods for the better determination of this influence, they complicated byirrelevant data the problem, of which the solution had proved false, and thus there was piled up,little by little in the course of ages a monstrous collection of complicated and often contradictorydoctrines, which perplex the reason, and whose audacious unsubstantiality will remain a perpetualsubject of astonishment. We should be confounded at the spectacle of the human mind losing itselfso long in the maze of these errors, did we not know how medicine, physics, and chemistry haveslowly groped their way before becoming experimental sciences, and what prolonged exertionsthey have had to make in order to free themselves from the tenacious grasp of oldsuperstitions".357

52. Cumont speaks of our souls as ignited essences which have descended from the ether,and of this beautiful tradition (which was casually passed on to me by my mother when I was achild, on an occasion of her sweeping the living room rug): "The Pythagoreans already believedthat the glittering particles of dust which danced ceaselessly in a sunbeam, were souls descendingfrom the ether, borne on the wings of light. They added that this beam, passing though the air andthrough water down to its depths, gave life to all things on earth. This idea persisted under theEmpire in the theology of the mysteries. Souls descended upon the earth, and

356Franz Cumont, L'Égypt des Astrologues, 1937, p.156-8.3 5 7 Franz Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, 1912, reprinted 1960, p. xiv.

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reascended after death toward the sky, thanks to the rays of the sun which served as the means oftransport."358 And Cumont says elsewhere "... according to the popular ideas of the ancients, manlives constantly surrounded by legions of spirits moving around him, tenuous demons or aerialsouls, whose favor he can win over and whose enmity he should dread. One finds similar beliefsamong all the Aryan people, in particular among the Hindus and Persians, and even among thoseof other races, such as the Semites. In our day still, the desert Bedouins consider that a host ofdjinns swarm and prowl around them, which intervene in the smallest incidents of their daily lifeand whose malignity must be disarmed by means of offerings."359 Cumont closes his book L'Égyptdes Astrologues (p. 206) by quoting an epigram often attributed to Ptolemy himself. It is said byNeugebauer3 60 to have followed the table of contents of copies of the Almagest from at least the3rd century A.D. on. It can also be found in the collection of ancient Greek poems, sayings, andanecdotes known as the Greek Anthology. Neugebauer’s translation from the Greek runs:

Well do I know I am mortal, a creature of one day. But ifmy mind follows the winding path of the stars, Then myfeet no longer rest on earth, but standing by Zeushimself, I take my fill of ambrosia, the divine dish.

35 8 Cumont, ibid., p. 103.

3 5 9 Franz Cumont, Lux Perpetua, 1949, p. 793 6 0 Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, Part Two, 1975, p. 835.

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Chapter 6. Earlier Christians and Astrology

1. Where do we go when we die? Wilhelm Gundel remarks in a chapter called "TheFirmament as the Eternal Home of Mankind" that numerous myths about the stars support the ideathat stars once were persons, and that everyone will someday go to heaven -- to an astronomical,not a metaphorical or theological heaven. He relates, for example, a myth of an unspecifiedAfrican group. Once upon a time God forbade people to go up to heaven. Nevertheless somepeople again climbed up to heaven from a high mountain. Thereupon God made the mountain sinkso they couldn't return. Now they lead eternal lives as star people. Thus the heavens are filledwith former people, or creatures like people, but for later persons the way up to heaven is forevercut off. Gundel remarks also on the German folk belief that when a child dies, God makes a newstar, and observes that Hellenistic astrologers repeatedly said that those who believed in theirteachings wholeheartedly would become immortal after their earthly deaths, and live among thestar gods.361

2. And where did the angels come from? In the New Bible Dictionary362, under the entry"Angel" we find the blunt statement that man's early thinking associated angels with stars. St.Thomas Aquinas dealt at length with doctrines about the motions and nature of the planets, and"throughout his many writings on these topics (Litt gives more than a hundred and thirtypassages on celestial influence alone) his angelology is there, waiting in the wings, directing histhoughts, it seems to me." North remarks that while Aquinas's theories were rational andsystematic, they were not, to some, in the best tradition of natural philosophy. "But this," Northsays, "is just another way of saying that one prefers light rays to angels."363

3. The notion of angels was for some associated with the idea that all stars are of the samekind, and for some Jews and Christians, the stars are "angels of light" (Lichtengel), or, if the starsare not themselves angels, they are governed by angels.364 Angels appear in the vision of Enoch,in which Enoch sees "the sons of angels step into flames of fire", their robes white and shininglike snow. We read in the New Bible Dictionary that Enoch was the son of Jared and father ofMethuselah, and a man of outstanding sanctity who enjoyed close fellowship with God. Hebecame a popular figure in the period between the end of Old Testament prophecy and the comingof Jesus. It appears that the legend of Enoch was elaborated in the Babylonian diaspora as acounterpart to the antediluvian sages of Mesopotamian legend. "So Enoch became the initiator ofthe art of writing365, and the first wise man, who received heavenly revelations of the secrets ofthe universe and transmitted them in writing to later generations. In the earlier tradition hisscientific wisdom is prominent, acquired on journeys through the heavens with angelic guides,and including astronomical, cosmographical and meteorological lore, as well as the solar calendarused at Qumran. He was also God's prophet against the fallen angels. Later tradition (2nd centuryB.C.E.) emphasizes his ethical teaching and especially his apocalyptic revelations of the course ofworld history, down to the last judgment. In the Similitudes

361 Wilhelm Gundel, Sternglaube, Sternreligion und Sternorakel, 1959, p. 25-26.

362 1982, edited by J. D. Douglas et al.363 J. D. North, "Medieval Concepts of Celestial Influence: A Survey", in Astrology, Science and Society,Historical Essays, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 13, 14; the work by T. Litt is Les Corps célestes dans l'univers deThomas d'Aquin, 1963.364Gundel, ibid., p. 48.3 6 5 Why is writing so often associated with the stars in ancient times?

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(1 Enoch 37-71) he is identified with the Messianic Son of Man (71:14-17), and some laterJewish traditions identified him with the nearly divine figure Metatron... Early Christianapocalyptic writings frequently expect his return with Elijah before the End."366

4. In the apocryphal scripture Ecclesiasticus, Enoch is mentioned in Chapter 44, the onewhich begins "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us." Charles M. Laymongives a conjectural reconstruction367: "Few like Enoch have been created on earth, an example ofknowledge to all generations. He walked with the Lord, and also he was taken up from theearth." In the New Testament, in Hebrews 11:5, we have: "By faith Enoch was taken up so thathe should not see death; and he was not found, because God had taken him." Genesis 5:21-24 has:"When Enoch had lived sixty-five years he became the father of Methuselah. Enoch walked withGod after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Thusall the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and hewas not, for God took him."368 365 days = 1 year, 365 years =?

5. Gundel, in describing the structure of the Paradiso of Dante's Divine Comedy remarksthat in the European Middle Ages, Dante (1265-1321) above all made use of the residence ofmen's souls in the stars. Each of Dante's planets is a paradise of its own. The souls in each planetpraise God and sing songs honoring the Virgin Mary. Pure light and flawless brilliance make upthe nature of the souls dwelling in the stars. Their substance is described as being like shiningcloud, but it is much thicker than cloud, and hard and polished like diamond. The souls are clothedin brilliant raiment, their faces shine radiantly, with the colors of the planets. Thus the souls on theSun are like burning suns, and on Mars like rubies in which flaming sunbeams glow. In theParadiso, Dante travels to the Empyrean realm through 9 spheres or heavens: the 7 planetaryheavens, the heaven of the fixed stars containing the souls of the saints, and the primum mobile,the first moving heaven, containing the angels.

6. Gundel observes that prayers to the sun, moon and stars are found in the pyramid texts ofthe 3rd millenium before Christ, and are found in coffin and temple texts through the followingmillenia up to the end of antiquity. Probably prayers to heaven -- physical heaven, to start with - -were among the earliest of prayers, and they are, of course, still to be found among Christians, aswell as the members of many other religions. Moreover, the boundary between prayers and appealsfor intercession to deities, on the one hand, and magical charms or incantations to spirits, on theother, is sometimes indistinct.369

7. In these and other ways Christianity shows aspects of astral religion. Still, manyChristians have been opposed to astrolatry and astrology from early on. One reason for this isthat it can be considered to be forbidden by Scripture. In Genesis 1.14-18, we find: "And Godsaid, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and letthem be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmamentof the heavens to give light upon the earth.' And it was so. And God made the two

366 New Bible Dictionary, 1982, under "Enoch".

367 This may be displaced from Chapter 49. The reconstruction is given on p. 575 of the Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, 1971, edited by Charles M. Laymon. I have slightly altered this quotation.368Revised Standard Version.3 6 9 Gundel, ibid., p. 39, 55.

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great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the starsalso. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule overthe day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness."370

8. Bernhard Anderson, remarks on this passage: "The sun, moon, and stars are not divinepowers that control man's destiny as was believed in antiquity, but are only lights. Implicitlyworship of the heavenly host is forbidden."371 Indeed, we find explicit condemnation of thispractice in Deuteronomy 4, 2, Kings 23, Jeremiah 8, and Zephaniah 1. In Deuteronomy 4.19, weread: "And beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moonand the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and worship them and serve them, thingswhich the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven." This might beinterpreted as forbidding both astrology and astronomy, in the modern senses of these words.Strictly speaking, it appears to forbid worship of celestial objects. One might use them fornavigation, or to predict seasonal changes or individual destinies, for example, without worshipingthem, unless one considers an intense devotion to the study of heavenly bodies for any purposewhatever a form of worship.

9. In the Bible, host of heaven may refer to celestial bodies, or to angelic beings. M. T.Fermer writes: "This phrase ... occurs about 15 times, in most cases implying the object of heathenworship (Dt. 4:19, etc.). The two meanings 'celestial bodies' and 'angelic beings' are inextricablyintertwined No doubt to the Hebrew mind the distinction was superficial, and thecelestial bodies were thought to be closely associated with heavenly beings ....... The Biblecertainly suggests that angels of different ranks have charge of individuals, and of nations; nodoubt in the light of modern cosmology this concept, if retained at all (as biblically it must be),ought properly to be extended, as the dual sense of the phrase 'host of heaven' suggests, to theoversight of the elements of the physical universe -- planets, stars and nebulae." Fermer goes on tosay that the phrase Lord of hosts is used nearly 300 times: "It is a title of might and power, usedfrequently in a military or apocalyptic context .... It is thought by some to have arisen as a title ofGod associated with his lordship over the 'host' of Israel; but its usage, especially in the prophets,clearly implies a relationship to the 'host of heaven' in its angelic sense, and this could well be theoriginal connotation."372

10. The reason given for not worshiping the stars in Deuteronomy 4.19 is that they aren'tparticular enough. One must worship the god of Israel, and not objects which belong to everyone.The next verse in Deuteronomy (4.20) reads: "But the Lord has taken you, and brought you forthout of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own possession, as at this day."Deuteronomy 17.2-5 prescribes strong punishment for sun, moon and star worship: "If there isfound among you, within any of your towns which the Lord your God gives you, a man or womanwho does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing his covenant, and hasgone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host ofheaven, which I have forbidden, and it is told you and you hear of it; then you shall inquirediligently, and if it is true and certain that such an abominable thing has been done in

370Revised Standard Version.

3 7 1 Comment in the New OxfordAnnotated Bible (1973), p. 2.372M. T. Fermer, article "host, host of heaven" in New Bible Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1982, edited by J. D. Douglas, etal.

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Israel, then you shall bring forth to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing,and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones."

11. In 2 Kings 21:1-3, we are told about a phase in the struggle of the Jews to replace earlierreligions and to resist imposition of alien religions. Manasseh became king of Judah when he was12 and reigned for 55 years: "And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to theabominable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For herebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he erected altars for Ba'al,and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven, andserved them." At which the Lord said by way of his prophets: "I am bringing upon Jerusalem andJudah such evil that the ears of every one who hears of it will tingle ... and I will wipe Jerusalem asone wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down."(2 Kings 21:12-13). 2 Chronicles 33:12-13adds that Manasseh prayed to the Lord, "and humbled himself greatly before the God of hisfathers." God received his plea, and restored him to Jerusalem after a captivity in Babylon. "ThenManasseh knew that the Lord was God." But Amon, the son of Manasseh, did the same as hisfather, and was killed by his servants. (2 Kings 21:19-26, 22:1-22; Chronicles 33:21-25, 34:1-2).The people of Judah killed the conspirators, and made Josiah, the son of Amon, king. Josiah "didwhat was right in the eyes of the Lord", and turned back to Yahweh.

12. In 2 Kings 23.4-5, we read that Josiah burned "all the vessels made for Ba'al, forAsherah, and for all the host of heaven" and "deposed the idolatrous priests "who burned incense toBa'al, to the sun, and the moon, and the constellations, and all the host of heavens." Jeremiah 8.1-2 has: "At that time, says the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its princes, thebones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shallbe brought out of their tombs; and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the hostof heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have gone after, and they have sought andworshiped; and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be as dung on the surface of theground." In the book of the prophet Zephaniah, doom is proclaimed for Judah, and in Zephaniah1.2,5, we read: "I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth," says the Lord",and among the priests to be destroyed are "those who bow down on the roofs to the host of theheavens." These condemnations of astral religion seem to be made chiefly on behalf ofeliminating competing gods, or at any rate competing priests and kings.

13. It appears that there was a migration of Hebrews from the north, perhaps from Palestineor the Syrian desert, to southern Arabia in the first millenium B.C. or maybe much earlier. This isthe region now called Yemen, of which there are at present two separate political entities. Duringthe first millenium, this region maintained a considerable trade in incense and spices. Accordingto one tradition, the Queen of Sheba came from a section of this region called Saba. The people ofthis civilization were known as the Sabaeans, Minaeans, Qatabaneans and Hadramauteans.

14. "The evidence goes to prove," says James Montgomery, "that the ruling classes whichmade the South-Arabian civilization came from the north. There the Semitic genius produced in aland of unique natural possibilities an artificial civilization that compares with the civilization ofBabylonia, only far more wholly Semitic, for in Babylonia the Semites built upon the alien

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Sumerian civilization." The religion of this pre-Islamic culture was polytheistic. The gods, or els,were similar to the baals of Canaan. Pre-eminent among the gods was "a definite astral triad ofhighest deities", consisting of "Moon, Sun, and Morning (or Evening) Star, a family group ofFather, Mother, and Son corresponding to the Babylonian trinity, Shamash, Sin, Ishtar."373

15. What this "pure" Semitic religion of southern Arabia has do with religions further northis hard to say. There has been much progress in archeological research in this region sinceMontgomery wrote in 1934, but this hasn't resulted in much light being shed on the religiouspractices of this culture. The southern religion may have been related to that of the Canaanites of theBible, who preceded the Israelites in Palestine. It may be that in some ways the Canaanite religionwas a forerunner of the Hebrew religion. John Romer observes: "Just as the faith of biblical Israelwas housed inside the traditional architecture of [Bronze Age] Canaan so some of the OldTestaments's oldest passages, its liturgy and Psalms are also rooted in Canaanite literature." 374 Wemay speculate that the astral component of Canaanite religion to which the Hebrews were soopposed was similar to that of the Semites of southern Arabia. Again, the correspondence of thethe south Arabian trinity with that of the Babylonians suggests a link with ancient Mesopotamianreligions. For our purposes, we need not involve ourselves in the intricate and frustrating historyand pre-history of Palestine and Arabia. It is sufficient to know that there was a potent astralreligion throughout the "Old Testament" regions before Israel became a nation.

1 6 . Theodore Wedel characterizes early and medieval Christian attitudes toward predictionby natural means in this way: "The Christians maintained, in general, that all divinatory arts, and,above all, astrology, were inventions of the devil, and could be carried on only by the aid ofdemons. This theory arose early, and remained throughout the Middle Ages the argument of lastresort .... It was an easy saving of argument, therefore, to admit at the outset the possibility ofastrological prediction, and, at the same time, to prohibit its use by asserting that it could only beaccomplished through diabolic aid. But danger lurked in pushing this theory too far; for howcould even demons read the future in the stars unless it was written there? 3 7 5

17. The early Christian theologian Origen was opposed to the art of casting horoscopes, andto the theory of the magnus annus, according to which, when the celestial bodies all return to theiroriginal positions after the lapse of some thousands of years, history will begin to repeat itself andthe same events will occur and the same persons live over again. Both of these views wereattributed to Celsus by Origen in his Contra Celsum (1st half of 3rd century C.E.). Origen rejectsthem on the grounds that to admit their truth is to annihilate free will. But, as Thorndike says,Origen is far from having freed himself from astrological attitudes toward the stars, and stillshows vestiges of the pagan tendency to worship them as divinities. He grants reasoning facultiesand a certain amount of prophetic powerr to the stars, but refuse to permit worship of them. Ratherhe believes that "the sun himself and moon and stars pray to the supreme God through his onlybegotten Son". Elsewhere Origen says that stars can even sin. In a fragment of a commentay onGenesis, he holds like Philo Judaeus that men were instructed in the meaning of the stars by thefallen angels. He argues at length that divine foreknowledge does not imply

373 James Montgomery, Arabia and the Bible, 1934, p. 15 1-2.

374 John Romer, Testament, 1988, p. 78.375 Theodore Otto Wedel, The Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology, Particularly in England, 1920, p. 16-17.

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necessity. Nevertheless, God instituted the stars as signs of the future, but he only intended forangels to read them, and considered it best that people remain ignorant of their futures. Evilspirits, however, taught men the art of astrology. However, Origen believes that the art is sodifficult and requires such superhuman accuracy that the predictions of astrologers are morelikely to be wrong than right, "for it is a much greater task," he says, "than lies within humanpower to learn truly from the motion of the stars what each person will do and suffer." 376

18. Tamsyn Barton in her description of the the position of Origen says: "Origen (185/86 –254/5 5), who remained immensely influential despite his later condemnation, illustrates thenature of the struggle between the astrologers and the church in his Commentary on Genesis. Inhis uneasy compromises he shows that astrology was a serious rival. Origen summarizes hisarguments as follows: '1) How our freedom is safeguarded when God knows in advance for alleternity the acts that each man is judged to have accomplished. 2) How the stars are not agents,but signs. 3) That humans cannot have accurate knowledge of these signs, but that they arerevealed for the sake of powers greater than humans. 4) The reason for which God has createdthese signs is in order to obtain knowledge for the powers will be examined.' (23.6.20-30) Heelaborates a Christian version of astral fatalism with his notion of the divine writing. This movingwriting, formed of letters and characters traced by God’s hand in the sky so that the dynameistheiae (divine powers) can read them, prefigures all cosmic events from creation toconsummation. This is done to instruct the celestial powers and make them happy, in uncoveringfor them all dicine mysteries and all kind of knowledge and in some cases to intimate to them theirprecise orders for the missions entrusted to them (20.29-39). Interestingly, he also allows evilpowers access to this knowledge, remarking explicitly that, if demons execute actions prefigured bythe stars, they do not do so because they read the 'writing' to discover the will of God but onlybecause they act maliciously of their own volition, as the good powers act freely when they followorders (21.1-12). He also seems to admit that stars are not inert objects manipulated by the divinebut, rather, animated, intelligent entities. Saint Pamphilus, in his work In Defense of Origen,affirms that this doctrine was not yet heretical." 377

19. Among the ancient Greeks, Carneades (c. 213-129 B.C.E.), founder of a school ofphilosophy called the New Academy, argued against fatalistic astrology on a number of grounds.Although Carneades, like Socrates, wrote nothing, his oral arguments have been preserved byothers. He used the familiar argument that twins, although born under the same signs, need nothave the same destiny. It was noted early that the stars move very quickly around the earth, andtwins are not in fact born under quite the same planetary influences. However, Carneades mighthave replied to this with another of his criticisms, that it is humanly impossible to fix the exacttime of birth or conception. Carneades' argument based on the destruction of morality had anespecially forceful and lasting influence on neo-Platonists and Christian theologians. He held thatastrological fatalism must be wrong, since if it were right, it would be the ruin of morality andpiety, of responsibility as well as irresponsibility, of laws and justice and punishment, of virtue aswell as vice, of praise as well as blame, of modesty as well as shame. Since these exist, fatalismfails. One might reply to this with the argument of Zeno the Stoic: moral as well as immoral actsare preordained, and so are responsibility and irresponsibility, the passing and

376 Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923-1958), v. 1, 1923, p. 456-458.

377 Tamsyn Barton, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the RomanEmpire, 1994

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obeying and breaking of laws, justice and punishment, virtue and vice, praise and blame,modesty and shame. Nevertheless, Carneades' arguments against astrology were repeated by alegion of Christian theologians, as has been traced by David Amand.378

20. In the early centuries of the Christian era, Amand says, following the blossoming ofStoicism, the heart-breaking nightmare of the heimarmene -- the absolutely necessary andindissoluble succession of causes and effects in the past, present and future -- terrified masses ofpeople devoted to the official polytheistic cults, and led them to seek deliverance in the mysteryreligions, and it terrified innumerable Christians who in the secrecy of their consciences were led todoubt their redemption by Christ. Many philosophers and theologians of antiquity, other thanStoics, were deeply committed to proving that our wills are free, and to refuting the demoralizingtheory of sidereal fatalism. Christian doctors, in particular, defended with great vigor humanfreedom of choice as a most excellent -- but most perilous -- gift of God. "The cultural history ofantiquity in its decline would be incomplete," says Amand, "without a chapter entitled: 'The baddream of the astrological heimarmene and the battle for moral freedom.'" 3 7 9 For Christians, theproblem was complicated by the doctrine that while men may not know the future, God does.

21. St. Augustine, for example, says that when ordinary men hear the word 'fate' "ordinaryusage leads them to think of nothing but the influence of the position of the stars at the momentwhen a child is born, or conceived." Augustine continues: "Those, however, who believe that thestars, apart from the will of God, determine what we do, what goods we have, or what evils wesuffer, must be thrown out of court, not only by adherents of the true religion, but also by thosewho choose to worship gods of any sort, false gods though they be. For what is the effect of thisbelief except to persuade men not to worship or pray to any god at all? As against these rashassertions, blasphemous and irreligious as they are, we Christians declare both that God knowsall things before they happen, and that it is by our own free will that we act, whenever we feeland know that a thing is done by us of our own volition. But we do not say that all things come topass by fate. No indeed, we say that nothing comes to pass by fate. For the word fate is commonlyused of the position of the stars at the moment of conception or birth, and we have shown thatword means nothing, but is the frivolous assertion of an unreality .... It is not true, then, that thereis no reality in our will just because God foresaw what would be in our will .... Therefore we arein no way compelled to abolish free will when we keep the foreknowledge of God, orblasphemously to deny that God foreknows the future because we keep free will. Instead weembrace both truths; with faith and trust we assert both. The former is required for correct belief,the latter for right living. And there is no right living if there is no correct belief in God. Far be itthen, from us, in order to enjoy free will, to deny the foreknowledge of him by whose assistancealone we are free, or shall ever be free Nay, it is precisely because of foreknowledge thatthere is no doubt that man himself sins when he sins. For he whose foreknowledge cannot bemistaken foresaw that neither fate, nor fortune, nor anything else but the man himself would sin.If he chooses not to sin, he certainly does not sin,

378 David Amand, Fatalisme et liberté dans l'antiquité grecque, Recherches sur la survivance del'argumentation morale antifataliste de Carnéade chez lesphilosophes grecs et les théologi ens chréti ens desquatres premiers siêcles, 1945.

379 ib id . , p . 587- 588 and p . 7 .

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and this choice not to sin was also foreseen by God."380 Thus while Augustine rejectsastrological prediction in the name of free will, he embraces a doctrine of predestination anddivine foreknowledge.

22. The limits of free will must be carefully observed, says Augustine. He writes in a letterto Hilarius: "... our free will is able to perform good works if it is helped from above, whichhappens as a result of humble petition and confession; whereas, if it is deprived of divine help, itmay excel in knowledge of the Law, but it will have no solid foundation of justice, and will bepuffed up with impious pride and deadly vanity This free will will be free in proportion as itis sound, and sound in proportion as it is submissive to divine mercy and grace. Therefore, itprays with faith and says: 'Direct my paths according to thy word, and let no iniquity havedominion over me.' It prays, it does not promise; it confesses, it does not declare itself; it begs forthe fullest liberty, it does not boast of its own power."381

23. Mircea Eliade says: "Of course, astrology, the hope that one can know the future, hasalways been popular with the rich and powerful -- with kings, princes, popes, etc. -- particularlyfrom the Renaissance on. One may add that the belief in the determination of destiny by theposition of the planets illustrates, in the last analysis, another defeat of Christianity. Indeed, theChristian Fathers fiercely attacked the astrological fatalism dominant during the last centuries ofthe Roman Empire. 'We are above Fate,' wrote Tatian; 'the Sun and the Moon are made for us!' Inspite of this theology of human freedom, astrology has never been extirpated in the Christianworld. But never in the past did it reach the proportions and prestige it enjoys in our times." 382 Itis doubtful that astrology, and astral religion, is as great a force right nowadays as it was in theHellenistic era, but when Eliade was writing (mid 1970's) it was enjoying one of its recurrentupsurges.

24. Eliade speculates on reasons for the popularity of astrology: "... the discovery that yourlife is related to astral phenomena does confer a new meanng on your existence. You are nolonger merely the anonymous individual described by Heidegger and Sartre, a stranger throwninto an absurd and meaningless world, condemned to be free, as Sartre used to say, with afreedom confined to your situation and conditioned by your historical moment. Rather, thehoroscope reveals to you a new dignity: it shows how intimately you are related to the entireuniverse. It is true that your life is determined by the movements of the stars, but at least thisdeterminant has an incomparable grandeur. Although, in the last analysis, a puppet pulled byinvisible ropes and strings, you are nevertheless a part of the heavenly world. Besides, thiscosmic predetermination of your existence constitutes a mystery: it means that the universemoves on according to a preestablished plan; that human life and history itself follow a patternand advance progressively toward a goal. This ultimate goal is secret or beyond humanunderstanding; but at least it gives meaning to a cosmos regarded by most scientists as the result ofblind hazard, and it gives sense to the human existence declared by Sartre to be de trop. Thisparareligious dimension of astrology is even considered superior to the existing religions, becauseit does not imply any of the difficult theological problems: the existence of a personal or

380Augustine, Civitate Dei contra paganos, City of God Against the Pagans, 413-426 C.E., translation by WilliamGreen, 1963, of v. i, p. 134-135; v.ix, p. 174-175; v.x, p. 184-187.381 Augustine, Letters, translated by Sister Wilfrid Parsons, 1953, v. 3, p. 321, 323-324.382 Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions, 1976, p. 59.

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transpersonal God, the enigma of Creation, the origin of evil, and so on. Following theinstructions of your horoscope, you feel in harmony with the universe and do not have to botherwith hard, tragic, or insoluble problems, At the same time, you admit, consciously orunconsciously, that a grand, through incomprehensible, cosmic drama displays itself and that youare a part of it; accordingly, you are not de trop."383 One may wonder to what extent resistance tonotions or the existence of free will and indeterminism, especially in human affairs, is motivatedby yearnings for security, or for being a part of an astral divine plan.

25. The Church continued to vigorously oppose astrology throughout the Middle Ages, andsince astrology and astronomy were intertwined, the opposition sometimes spilled over toastronomy. Pierre Duhem says, speaking of medieval Italian astrologers: "To deny humanfreedom, to deny the miraculous action of Providence in the world, to use superstitious divinationsand magical operations, was to contradict all Christian teaching and to contravene the most strictprescriptions of the Church. Among the adepts of astrology, then, and the ministers ofCatholicism, a struggle was inevitable. Sometimes it was violent. The unbelieving astrologerswho enlivened the spirit of the Court of Naples harshly attacked orthodox doctrine; and themendicant monks, Dominicans and Franciscans, zealously defended dogma. The Church ragedagainst impenitent error with the toughness which was the rule of the time, and over the history ofItalian astronomy in the Middle Ages the flame of the stake sometimes threw its bloody gleam."384

26. The prime example used by Duhem of such a Neapolitan astrologer is Guido Bonatti(born before 1223, died 1296 or 1297), who wrote a popular book on astrology, and wasvigorously opposed by a celebrated preaching friar, John of Vincence (Jean de Vicence). Onecan't help noticing that Bonatti lived to an old age, unpunished by the Church. Pico dellaMirandola later (1495) characterized Bonatti's work as puerile and only suitable for fools.However, Duhem describes Bonatti's arguments, meant to show that the possible, which liesbetween the necessary and the impossible, is not the contingent, as Aristotle and Abu Ma'sharhad said, but something like the necessary while it is still potential. This may be wrong, butBonatti's arguments, as quoted by Duhem, don't sound foolish.

27. Duhem himself speaks admiringly of the views of Avicenna (985-1036 C.E.) and AlGazali (1058-1111 C.E.) in which a more subtle version of this idea is embedded in an elaboratephilosophical and theological system, which was of paramount influence in the Muslim world,and had considerable effect in the Christian world. A basic motive of Avicenna and Al Gazali wasto elucidate the relations between God, the celestial intelligences belonging to the heavenlyspheres, and the bodies and souls of the sublunary world. Duhem says: "For Aristotle, in anysubstance of the sublunary world, there is a matter which exists potentially and a form whichexists actually. For Avicenna and Al Gazali, in all being after the First Cause, there is an essencewhich is simply possible and an existence which a creative cause makes necessary."385

28. In this last formulation, the First Cause and creative cause are allowed for, and amechanism for turning the possible into the necessary is furnished, but the underlying intent to

3 8 3 Eliade, ibid., p. 61.384Pierre Duhem, Le Système du Monde, 1913, v. 4, p. 187-1 88.3 8 5 ibid., v. 4, p. 495.

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show that everything has a cause (First Cause excepted) resembles that of Bonatti. Furthermore:"Like Peripatetism [Aristotelianism], like Stoicisn, like Hellenic Neoplatonism, the ArabicNeoplatonism makes all of its metaphysics lead to the justification of the principle which theastrologers claim for themselves. With what rigor Avicenna develops it! With what care hesubmits to it everything which happens in the world, even what seems to happen by chance, eventhe decisions of our wills." The principle, in brief, is that everything for which existence has beenpreceded by non-existence, including voluntary decisions, has a cause; and that terrestrial eventsarise from celestial ones, which in turn proceed in a necessary manner from the necessity of thedivine will.386

29. Despite Christian opposition to astrology, there were Christian writers who promoted itfrom early on. For example, there was Firmicus, more completely Julius Firmicus Maternus, whoconverted to Christianity in the time of the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great (4thcentury C.E.). He wrote a work called Mathesis, on the casting of horoscopes, which was well-known throughout medieval times and later. As we would expect of a Christian, he was not afatalist, and he believed in one supreme God. According to Thorndike: "Firmicus provides notonly for divine government of the universe and creation of the world and man, but also for prayer toGod and for human free will, since by the divinity of the soul we are able to resist in somemeasure the decrees of the stars. He also holds that human laws and moral standards are notrendered of no avail by the force of the stars but are very useful to the soul in its struggle by thepower of the divine mind against the vices of the body." Thorndike remarks that the astrologerHephaestion of Thebes, who wrote later in the fourth century, seems also to have been a Christian,so Firmicus seems not to have been a solitary case or an anomaly.387

30. Firmicus makes specific predictions which Thorndike takes to be revealing of the stateof the society around Firmicus. For example, the evidence of the Mathesis suggests that mostpeople in what we see to have been declining Rome were not conscious of the the intellectualdecadence and lack of interest in science generally imputed to them.388 It seems that mathematicsand medicine were important factors in 4th century culture, along with the rhetorical studieswhose role may have been over- estimated in recent times, perhaps by scholars uninterested in thesciences.

31. During the flowering of Arabian culture in the couple of hundred years after the rise ofIslam, there were many Arabian astrologers, and some of their writings strongly influencedChristians during the European Middle Ages, chiefly starting from around 1100. Alkindi andAlbumasar (Abu Ma'shar) (9th century C.E.) are two especially famous names. Another,somewhat lesser known, was Thebit ben Corat (or Thabit ibn Kurrah, Abu Al Hasan, etc., etc.),(also 9th century C.E.). Roger Bacon (c. 12 14-1292) alludes to him as "the supreme philosopheramong all Christians [!], who has added in many respects, speculative as well as practical, to thework of Ptolemy." However, Thorndike says he was not a Mohammedan, but a heathen or pagan,a member of the sect of Sabians, whose chief seat was at his birth-place, Harran. These arepresumably descendants of the Sabaeans of southern Arabia we mentioned earlier.

386Duhem, ibid., p. 493 -494.387 Lynn Thorndike, ibid., v. 1, p. 531, 535.388 ibid., p. 538.

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32. The Sabians, Thorndike says, appear to have continued the paganism and astrology ofBabylonia, but also to have accepted Hermetic traditions from Egypt, and some Gnostic and Neo -Platonic doctrines. They laid special stress on the spirits of the planets, to whom they prayed andmade sacrifices and suffumigations. Days on which planets reached their culminating points werecelebrated as festivals. They observed houses and stations of the planets, their risings and setting,conjunctions and oppositions, and their rule over certain hours of the day and night. Some planetswere masculine, others feminine, some lucky, others unlucky. They were related to differentmetals, and different members of the human body were placed under different signs of the zodiac.Each planet had its own appropriate figures and forms, and ruled over specified climates, regionsand things in nature. Most of this, however, is astrological commonplace, whether of pagans,Mohammedans or Christians. It was only in worshiping the spirits of the planets and denying theexistence of one God, and in their practice of sacrificial divination, that the Sabians could bedistinguished as heathen or pagan. Thebit became one of the Caliph's astronomers in Bagdad,where he founded his Sabian community. He was famed above all as a philosopher, but most ofhis philosophical works are lost. Some geometrical treatises by him are extant, also a work onweights, and four astronomical treatises, evidently of no great originality. He was also the authorof a work cited by numerous medieval authorities, on the construction of astronomical orastrological images for various ends. This was said by Thebit, on the authority of Aristotle andPtolemy, to be the "acme of astrology".389

33. Theodore Wedel observes that in the astrological treatises of such Arabian writers asAlbumasar, Abenragel and Alchabitius, judicial astrology as Ptolemy had described it occupied aposition of minor importance. Instead, emphasis was on interrogationes and electiones. For theinterrogationes, rules were given with which an astrologer could answer questions about suchmatters as identifying a thief, the location of missing objects or persons, trustworthiness of anassociate, or the wealth of a prospective marriage partner. For the electiones, rules were given fordetermining propitious moments for actions. These might be applied to even small details, such asthe proper time for boarding a ship, writing a letter, or cutting one's fingernails.390

34. Richard Lemay has argued that a work of Albumasar, whose name more accurately andcompletely was Abu Ma'shar Ja'far ben Muhammad ben 'Umar al-Balkhi, was very likely thesingle most important original source of Aristotle's theories of nature for European scholars,starting a little before the middle of the 12th century.391 It was not until later in the 12th centurythat the original books of Aristotle on nature began to become available in Latin. The works ofAristotle on logic had been known earlier, and Aristotle was generally recognized as "the master oflogic". But during the course of the 12th century, Aristotle was transformed into the "master ofthose who know", and in particular a master of natural philosophy, or the scientific theory ofnatural things. It is especially interesting that the work of Abu Ma'shar in question is a treatise onastrology. Its Latin title is Introductorium in Astronmiam, a translation of the Arabic Kitab al-mudkhal al-kabir ila 'ilm ahkam an-nujum, written in Baghdad in the year 848 A.D. It wastranslated into Latin first by John of Seville in 1133, and again, less literally and abridged, byHermann of Carinthia in 1140.

3 8 9 Thorndike, ibid., v. 1, p. 66 1-662.390Wedel, ibid., p. 53-54.3 9 1 Richard Lemay, Abu Ma 'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century, The Recovery of Aristotle'sNatural Philosophy through Arabic Astrology, 1962.

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35. Lemay says: "Genuine peripatetic [i.e., Aristotelian] doctrines in the Introductorium arehopelessly mingled together with empirical notions common among psychologists, physicians andother popular practitioners of Oriental society while, on the other hand, an Aristotelian 'scientific'basis is very cleverly set up in support of astrology." (Lemay, ibid., p. xxix.) Thus, to begin with,the Christian scholars of Europe associated the natural science of Aristotle with astrology. Thissheds light on the nature of the condemnations of Aristotle by Church authorities early in the 13thcentury, which emphasized pernicious doctrines of astrological fatalism and pantheisticcosmology, and on the later integration of Aristotle into Christian doctrine made by such scholarsas Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Lemay goes so far as to say that"during the thirteenth century, the authority of Abu Ma'shar on astronomy-astrology, and oncosmology, disputed the first place with Aristotle himself", and quotes a marginal note in amedieval manuscript to the effect that Ptolemy in the Almagest is the authority for the courses ofthe planets, and Alfraganus for their geometry, but on the nature of the planets and their influenceon the lower world, Abu Ma'shar is set above Aristotle. 392

36. During the course of the 12th century, most of the translations into Latin from Arabicmade by European scholars were of astrological material. As a result, says Lemay: "Astrologybecame a superior branch of physics, a sort of provisional metaphysics to be modified anddisplaced only in the thirteenth century at the time of the full adoption of Aristotle's Metaphysicsand Physics. The twelfth century intellectual effervescence stirred up by Arabic learning opened atransitional period in natural philosophy based principally on the premisses of astrology." 393 Thekind of basic premise Lemay has in mind is the one derived by Abu Ma'shar from the works ofAristotle, to the effect that every motion in the physical universe depends strictly anddeterministically on the motion of celestial objects, especially the planets (including the sun andmoon), which are alive and act as agents of God.

37. It appears, then, that the partisans of natural science in the 12th century, Christiansincluded, were saturated with astrology. Lemay says: "The names of Adelard of Bath, John ofSeville, Hermann of Carinthia, William of Conches, Bernard Silvester, Roger of Hereford, Danielof Morley, Raymond of Marseilles, Robert of Chester, Alfred of Sareshel, Alanus de Insulis andRaoul of Longchamp. are all associated one way or another with the rising interest in the naturalAristotle; all were firm believers as well in the validity of astrological science. Twelfth centuryscholars have long been studied with the conviction that they were entirely absorbed in logicaldisputes, or bent on finding in nature a preordained imitation of biblical or theological concepts.Dispassionate examination of the rich manuscript materials remaining from this period hasresulted in nothing less than a re-discovery of some major aspects of twelfth century intellectuallife. Whether in astrology or alchemy, in medicine or mathematics, in geometry, botany ormineralogy, etc., the intellectual pursuits of twelfth century scholars appear to have ranged wellbeyond the pale of religious thought; theirs were the permanent interests which men of all timeshave shown in the physical laws of their natural habitat. The dedication of astrologers to theirdiscipline represented a far more serious preoccupation than the mere mention of their sciencewould incline modern historians to imagine. It has always been a great

392Lemay, ib id. , p. xxxv.

3 9 3 ib id . , p . 8 .

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mistake of historians of medieval thought to minimize or totally to overlook this field of inquiryas of nor importance or having negligible bearing upon the intellectual outlook of the time." 3 9 4

38. In the 8 volumes of his A History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923-1958),Thorndike discusses the attitudes toward astrology of a host of medieval writers and leaders. Forexample, there is Saint Hildegard (1098-1179) of Bingen. At first sight, she is a strong opponent ofastrology. She calls the mat hematici "deadly instructors", and warns that men "should not seeksigns of the future in either stars or fire or birds or any other creature". On the other hand, sheemphasizes the influence of the moon on natural phenomena, and also the passions of men viatheir "humors" (fluids), which determine to some fair extent their character and even something oftheir fates. There is, in her Causae et curae, a list of predictions for each day of the moon of thetype of person who will be conceived on that day.395

39. John of Salisbury (1 120?-1 180) was thoroughly opposed to astrology, but got into somedifficulty trying to reconcile God's omniscience and foreknowledge with fatal necessity.396 Of theJewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204), Thorndike says: "That Maimonides was wellacquainted with the art of astrology may be inferred from his assertion that he has read everybook in Arabic on the subject. Maimonides not only believed the stars were living, animatedbeings and that there were as many pure intelligences as there were spheres, but he states twice inthe Guide for the Perplexed that all philosophers agree that this inferior world of generation andcorruption is ruled by the virtues and influences of the celestial spheres. While their influence isdiffused through all things, each star or planet also has particular species especially under itsinfluence."397 For some reason, Maimonides identified the control of human destinies by theconstellations with the rule of blind chance. Maimonides also believed that God has planned allthings in advance, and that this is incompatible with things occurring fortuitously. John ofSalisbury, on the other hand, attacked both Epicureans and Stoics on the ground that the formerbelieve in blind chance and the latter in strict necessity, and both are wrong. It's not clear fromThorndike's description whether he was talking about everything happening by chance forEpicureans, and by necessity for Stoics, or just about some things for each.

40. Robert Grosseteste (1 168?-1253) was Bishop of Lincoln. A Franciscan chronicler,Salimbene, regarded him as one of the greatest clerics in the world. Matthew Paris, aBenedictine chronicler, even though he was in some ways not well disposed to Grosseteste,referred to him as a saint, and Grosseteste was indeed put forward for canonization. Some saythe nomination was unsuccessful because of the way Grosseteste had fearlessly criticized thetemporal organization of the Church, especially in connection with awarding benefices tounsuitable office seekers. Roger Bacon, sometimes acclaimed as a scientific thinker of greatoriginality, praised him as the most illustrious scientist and translator of the Schools, and evenranked him with Solomon, Aristotle and Avicenna. For Grosseteste "mathematics" includesastronomy, and astronomy includes astrology.

394Lemay, ibid., p. xxiv-xxv.395 Thorndike, l.c., v. 2, 1923, p. 148-151.396 ibid., p. 164-167.397 ibid., p211.

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41. Thorndike says of Grossesteste's De artibus liberalis: "Grosseteste accepts astronomyor astrology as the supreme science and says in his treatise on the liberal arts that naturalphilosophy needs its aid more than that of the others. There is scarcely any operation whether ofnature or of man, such as the planting of vegetables, or transmutation of minerals, or cure ofdiseases, which can dispense with astronomical assistance. For inferior nature does not act exceptas celestial virtue moves and directs it. He then goes on to detail the effects of the moon, Saturn,and Mars on the hour of planting, and then to emphasize the importance of selecting the favorablehours astrologically in medical practive and in alchemy where he associates the seven planetswith seven metals. He also argues that the harmony of the movements of the celestial spheres isfound also in their effects upon the inferior world. Therefore he who knows the due proportion ofthe elements in the human body and the concord of the soul with the body, can restore any lack ofharmony in the same to its proper state. In other words, diseases and even wounds and deafnessshould be curable by music based upon a knowledge of astrology and mathematics, and oneshould also be able to control such emotions as joy, grief, and wrath."398

42. In another treatise, De impressionibus aeris seu deprognosticatione, on weatherprediction, Grosseteste discusses such things as the power of the zodiacal signs and planets,including such technical matters as house, exaltation and aspect. On the question of free will, heholds that the human body is subject to two forces: "as part of the world of cause it is changed inmany ways by the movements of the stars, but it is also subject to the control of the mindespecially in voluntary actions." (idem, p. 446.) He follows Augustine in The City of God indenying that all our actions which seem freely willed are predictable from the stars. J. D. Northsays: "In his Hexameron [commentary on the first 6 books of the Bible], Grosseteste's finalposition on astrological belief is stated at some length. Superficially it is hostile -- astrologybooks are written at the dictation of the devil, and should be burned --but his hostility has to dowith the issue of determinism, free will, and theological values. His belief in celestial influencewas as strong as ever. He thought that the science of the astrologers must fail because theinfluences they sought are so precisely focussed in accordance with the momentary stellarconfiguration, that even the most accurate astronomer would not find them. They were realenough, in Grosseteste's view."399

43. Grosseteste was a great supporter of the use of geometry in explaining naturalphenomena. Thorndike observes that in his treatise De lineis, angulis etfiguris, Grosseteste holdsthat not only light but every natural agent sends forth its virtue to the object affected and acts onsense or matter along geometrical straight lines. This doctrine of radiation or emanation of forceseems to date back at least to Plotinus, and Alkindi among the Arabs in his treatise on StellarRays says that the stars and all objects in the world of the four elements emit rays of this sort.400

44. James McEvoy considers Grosseteste's masterpiece, and most original work, to be hisDe luce (On Light). McEvoy says that according to Grosseteste: "The entire world -machine wascreated in the beginning from first form and first matter. Light multiplied itself from a single

398 Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 445.

399 J. D. North, "Medieval Concepts of Celestial Influence: A Survey", in Astrology, Science and Society,Historical Essays, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 11.400Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 443.

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point infinitely and equally on all sides to form a sphere, and extended matter into the dimensionsof the actual universe ........................... Though the propagation of light and the consequentexpansion of matter, beginning from the primordial point, takes place equally in every direction, ofnecessity the outermost reaches of extended matter are more sparse and rarefied than are theinner, which remain capable of further rarefaction. The farthest limit of extension is reached whenno further rarefaction of matter is possible; the ultimate capacity of matter being realized, the areaimmediately bounded by the outer spherical surface is incapable of further physical change. Aperfect body had come into being, the firmament having in its composition only first matter andform. The most simple body in essence, it is the greatest in quantity and the container of allsubsequent bodies."401 Shades of the Big Bang, and Expanding Universe!

45. McEvoy concludes from his examination of the De luce that Grosseteste "aimedconsciously at producing a synthesis of the cosmogony of Genesis and the cosmology of the DeCaelo [of Aristotle]." As to Grosseteste's place in the history of science, McEvoy says: "Hisintuition led him to the conviction that mathematics, far from being an abstraction from aspects ofthe physically real, is the very internal texture of the natural world, presiding over its coming tobe and controlling its functioning; that, in the words of Kepler, 'Ubi materia, ibi geometria'['Where there's matter, there's geometry']. Of course, this faith was metaphysical; but then so toowas much of the high-level inspiration of scientists in the seventeenth century. It was abstract,because the mathematical structure of reality is not given to the senses, but intuited or believed inby the mind. What it afforded was not so much scientific results as delight in the pureunderstanding of the essence of things, and, what Grosseteste valued most of all, a glimpsebeyond the beauty of the harmoniuous textura of things to the mind of the primus numerator['prime calculator'], the lux prima et inaccessibilis ['primal and inaccessible light'] The novelaspect of Grosseteste's world-system goes back entirely to this conception of God as the greatcalculator. For the first time, it would appear, in the history of Christian belief, God is addressed asa mathematician whose ideas for creation are mathematical operations realizable in matter and

form. " 4 0 2

46. Here Grosseteste employs a mathematics different in kind from the numerology foundat times among the Church Fathers. McEvoy suggests that the patristic numerology might havebeen pursued with the expectation that it would reveal a coherence and harmony in creation.However, Grosseteste's idea of God as Numerator generates expectations of a moremathematical type, the kind of expectations which fulfil themselves in the sciences. Thishappens, McEvoy says, "... when an inner need for meaning and form sharpens the eye andencourages it to read upon the screen of ideal reality the after-image of the programme thatdetermined the innermost structure of things. In scientific inquiry, evidence turns up to answerinner needs of the questioning mind, if they are insistent enough and sufficiently clear andcoherent; for in this respect nature is not parsimonious or ungenerous; she is ample enough tosuit different tastes."403 McEvoy is making a distinction similar to the one I made earlier betweenapplied and appliqued mathematics.

4 0 1 James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste, 1982, p. 152, 154.402McEvoy, ibid., p. 167,210-211,214.4 0 3 ibid., p. 2 14-215.

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47. However, Grosseteste also indulged in numerology at times. McEvoy describesGrosseteste's proof that the universe is a complete and harmonious thing: "In the most simplebody there are four things to be found: form, matter, composition, and the composite. Form istotally simple and corresponds to the mathematical unity. Matter is the dyad, due to its binaryqualities of receptivity and divisibility. Composition corresponds to the number three, for in itare informed matter, immattered form, and the property itself of composition. 'Four'comprehends whatever the composite is beyond these three. The aggregate of these numbers isten, contained in the quaternity of the first body (which virtually contains all the others), andmirrored in the number of bodies in the world -- for the four elements form together a singleterrestrial body. Manifestly, ten is the perfect number of the universe and is possessed by everywhole and perfect thing. Clearly, too, only the five proportions found in the first four numbersare adequate for the composition and harmony that sustain every composite being; they are thefoundation of harmony in musical sound, gesture, and rhythm."404

48. With Grosseteste, we have in the same person an understanding of an intrinsicmathematical nature of nature, and an imposition on nature of some numerology. We also have inthe same person a devotion to astrology, and a cosmogony and cosmology based on light whichbears a faint resemblance to current cosmologies of the "big bang" type. McEvoy says: "In therational and scientific cosmology of De luce two basic ideas are enthroned, namely, the continuityof nature and action through the material world, and the ultimate unity of matter. Both of thesebear some resonance of the half-magical world of astrology and alchemy The influence ofastrology and alchemy made it natural for Grosseteste in the earlier stages of his philosophicalitinerary to look for continuity of nature and action between the heavens and the earth."405 Itappears that we have here an example of the confluence of influences out of which the Europeanscientific revolution of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries was eventually to grow.

49. Wedel argues that the most decisive factor in the development of the doctrines onastrology of many university scholars -- scholastics -- was the works of Aristotle, whose completecanon had been made accessible in Latin translations in the first quarter of the 13th century. In hisDe generatione et corruptione (On growth and decay), Aristotle had taught that the processes ofearthly growth and change depend on the stellar spheres. These were the "crystalline" spheres inwhich the stars and planets were said to be embedded, a theory proposed, it seems, by Eudoxus,presumably to explain why these objects had such regular motions. Wedel says: "And astrologicaltheory had, since the days of Ptolemy, become so inseparable a part of Aristotelian cosmologythat the Christian theologians, in welcoming the one, were inevitably compelled to offer afavorable reception to the other. A modification of such importance in the traditional doctrine ofthe Church could not take place without a struggle In effecting a compromise between theverdict of the early Church and the new astrology, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas faced aproblem of no slight difficulty."406

50. Thomas Bradwardine (1290(?)-1349) was a Christian theologian of Oxford whopublished in 1344 a work called De causa Dei (God's Cause), and was archbishop of Canterbury atthe end of his life (victim of the Black Plague). Gordon Leff says that De causa Dei was a

404McEvoy, ibid., p. 157-158.405 ibid., p. 182, 187; cf. also p. 165 -166.406 Theodore Otto Wedel in The Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology, Particularly in England, 1920, p. 64.

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response of faith to scepticism, notably that of William of Ockham (d. 1349, victim of the BlackPlague). It came from a person for whom theology was the apex of the sciences (in the generalsense of the word), and was meant to cut away at outlooks which start from men rather than fromGod. There are, Bradwardine says, two views of fate. One is fate as inevitable necessity, ingeneral due to the heavenly bodies, and more specifically due to individual celestial objects,ruling those born under their influences. The other view of fate is as a certain disposition, andguidance from above. The first view, according to Bradwardine, cannot be accepted by Christiansat all. If, however, the necessity is withdrawn, and fate governed by the stars is seen rather as adisposition and inclination in man, then the fate of the stars need not be rejected -- for divine fatemust be recognized. Is it not written, Bradwardine says, "He spake and it was done?" We only callthings fortuitous when we don't know their causes. In fact, just as with fate, God is the cause ofeverything. But Providence, God's active governance, has nothing in common with necessityimposed by the stars, or with pure chance.

51. In Leff's view: "... with Bradwardine, God's will is not to be regarded in the way theArab philosophers saw it, as a universal and impersonal first cause acting implacably through ahierarchy of secondary causes, such as planets and celestial spheres. Bradwardine's God isessentially personal and immediate; the whole of his view of divine participation flows from Hisdirect presence ... Bradwardine's view of creation may be likened to a precise machine devoid initself of any direction or movement. Its workings are beyond its own knowledge and power. Itneeds the constant current of God's will to infuse it with life and purpose. It cannot, therefore, bejudged in itself, for without God's impulsion it is like a propeller without an engine. Nothing can beleft to its own resources."407

52. But there were also Christians who tried to square fatalistic astralism with Christiandoctrine. Before the time of Bradwardine, Bernard Silvester, a Christian university teacher, in hispoem Cosmographia (c. 1145), said: "The heavens ... write by means of the stars and prefigureeverything which is able to arise by means of the law of fate. They presignify by what mode ortenor the sidereal motion impels the passage of history. The order of events lies hidden in thestars; a longer and more ordered succession of time will explain it."408

53. Stock comments: "This view, it should be noted, is not a complete acquiescence todeterminism It is a position in which God's effective power is translated into causal terms asBernard understood them ........It indicates that God is placed beyond the universe which magnifieshis spirit and suggests as well, as do Firmicus and Abu Ma'shar, that history is entirelypredictable from the stars........ [It is part of Bernard's position that:] The heavens reveal in theirmotions and changes the pattern of human cultural and social history. Thus the unfolding ofcreation, including Noys' part in it, is to be understood as the revelation of a pre-existingorder."409 Noys is "God's providence" (p. 14), evidently not to be confused with nous,intelligence, although this is what Thorndike takes noys to be in another work by Bernard.410

407 Gordon Leff, Bradwardine and the Pelagians, A study of his 'De causa Dei'and its opponents, 1957, p.11, 53-54, 95.408 Quoted by Brian Stock in his Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century, A Study of Bernard Silvester,1972, p. 131.409 ibid., p. 131-132.410Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, v. 2, p. 105.

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Bernard also wrote a narrative poem called Mathematicus, in which a Roman knight and ladyconsult a mathematicus (astrologer) "who could learn from the stars ... the intentions of the gods,the mind of the fates, and the plan of Jove, and discover the hidden causes and secrets ofnature."411

5 4 . Such views are not unlike those of certain physicists (now, it appears, in a minority)who contend that nothing is really left to chance, although human limitations may require us todescribe phenomena probabilistically. Abraham Pais says in his biography of Einstein: "Everyonefamiliar with modern physics knows that Einstein's attitude regarding quantum mechanics wasone of skepticism. No biography of him fails to mention his saying that God does not throw dice.He was indeed given to such utterances (as I know from experience), and stronger ones, such as'It seems hard to look in God's cards. But I cannot for a moment believe that He plays dice andmakes use of "telepathic" means (as the current quantum theory alleges He does)' [Einstein's]was not a life of prayer and worship. Yet he lived by a deep faith -- a faith not capable of arational foundation -- that there are laws of Nature to be discovered. His lifelong pursuit was todiscover them. His realism and his optimism are illuminated by his remark: 'Subtle is the Lord,but malicious He is not' ('Rafiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht') "4 1 2

55. Einstein, in the early years of the 20th century, was the foremost creator of relativisticmechanics. Kepler, in the early years of the 17th century, was one of the foremost creators ofclassical mechanics. Kepler, it turns out, had already said much the same as Einstein about Godplaying dice: Richard Westfall says: "When we turn to Kepler's natural philosophy, we find aconception of nature that directly supported his religious position. Of foremost importance is thefact that the universe remained for him a cosmos. It is well known that much of Kepler'ssignificance in the history of science stems from the impulse he gave to causal analyses ofphenomena and to the concept of mathematical laws. Kepler's laws were never impersonal laws,however, and the universe in which they worked was not for him the chance product of their blindoperation. It was an ordered cosmos consciously contrived. Giordano Bruno's speculative system,"that dreadful philosophy," represented to him the blind operation of impersonal causes. He fearedthe very idea and fled from it. Where means are adapted to definite purposes, Kepler insisted,"there order exists, not chance; there is pure mind and pure Reason." "The Creator," he informedMaestlin, "does nothing by chance."413

56. To return to the European Middle Ages, and in particular to the compromise ofscholastics with astrology: Thorndike points out that a number of passages in the works of St.Thomas Aquinas ascribe an important place to astrological theory in natural science. Aquinasrefused to explain magic as worked by the stars, but he accounted for occult works of nature andnatural divination by astral influence. He grants nobility and incorruptibility to the heavenlybodies, but regards them as made of material substance, even though Plato and Aristotle

4 1 1 Quoted by Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 106.412Abraham Pais, 'Subtle is the Lord ... ', 1982, p. 440 and p. vi.

4 1 3 Richard S. Westfall, "The Rise of Science and the Decline of Orthodox Christianity: A Study of Kepler,Descartes, and Newton," in God and Nature, Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science,1986, p. 221; the quotations from Kepler come from Kepler's Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger, The Six-Cornered Snowflake, and a letter to Maestlin, 2 Aug 1595 in Johannes Kepler, Werke 13:27.

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attributed souls and intelligence to them. But he regards the stars as media between angelicintelligences and us. He is inclined to answer affirmatively the question, do the angels move thestars? He frequently affirms that God rules inferior creatures through superior ones, and earthlybodies by heavenly ones. According to Aquinas, no wise man doubts that all natural motions ofinferior bodies are caused by the movement of the celestial bodies. Reason and experience, saintsand philosophers, have proved it over and over again.

57. In this connection, Aquinas cites two passages from Augustine and Dionysius whichdon't seem as sweeping as his own assertion. Augustine affirms merely that "grosser and inferiorbodies are ruled by subtler and superior ones according to a certain order," and Dionysius simplysays that the rays of the sun aid in the generation of life and nourish and increase and perfect it.Indeed, says Thorndike, throughout his arguments for astrology, Aquinas, like his teacher Albert,seems to stretch authorities on a Procrustean bed of citation and to make church fathers who arefamous for their attacks on astrologers seem to favor a limited rule of the stars over all nature.Aquinas further considers an art of judicial astrology possible. He asserts that besides the crudeprognostications which sailors and farmers make from the sky, it is feasible "by some other moreoccult observations of the stars to employ judicial astrology concerning corporeal effects."414

58. Nevertheless, Aquinas declares that the human will is free and that the soul -- being anintellectual rather than a material substance, cannot be coerced by corporeal substances, and inparticular by celestial objects. He also is of the opinion that many occurences are purelyaccidental, "as when a man digging a grave finds buried treasure." And he says "no natural agentcan incline one to that which happens accidentally." Aquinas is also aware, however, that theastrologers themselves agree that the wise man rules the stars. Conversely, he recognizes that manis not purely an intellectual being, that he often obeys sensual appetites, and that even the mindderives its knowledge from the senses and in a condition disturbed by phantasy, and that thereforethe stars may indirectly affect the human intellect to a considerable extent.415

59. Thomas Litt gives this summary of Thomas Aquinas's views on astrology:

"(1) He affirms as absolutely certain the entirely general principle of a universal influence ofcelestial bodies on all corporeal events on earth, including physiological events involvinganimals and people. This is for him an absolute philosophical certainty; besides that, it is acommon sense truth and it is also a truth taught by the "authority of the saints"; he cites notablyDenis [Dionysius] and St. Augustine.

(2) He affirms with just as much certainty that the influence of the celestial bodies onhuman acts is indirect and never necessitating. He very often adds that the contrary opinion isheretical, since it excludes human free will.

(3) He never asks once if the fundamental astrological axiom or postulate is well foundedor not: the decisive importance on the whole future of a person of the configuration of theheaven at the moment of birth (the topic of geniture). We have found only once in St. Thomasthe word nativitas in the sense of the topic of geniture: in the citation of the Centiloquium [of

414 Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 609-610.415 Thorndike, l.c.

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Ptolemy] which we presented [earlier]. This citation is moreover the only concrete astrologicalprediction which we have encountered and it it introduced with a formula expressing much doubt.He does mention one other time the stellar patrons of the seven days of the week, but this is inorder to observe that one can, without peril to the faith, adopt or reject this theory.

(4) He admits that in principle astrologers correctly predict the future of people .... [Littsummarizes 10 references showing this]

(5) On the licitness of astrological divination, we have six texts, in which the teachingremains constant throughout the career of St. Thomas, without one being able to discern anevolution to either greater or less severity. The doctrine amounts to this: It is not superstitious orillicit to try to predict by the stars droughts, rains, etc. It is superstitious and illicit to try topredict by the stars free human actions and, according to the authority of St. Augustine, the deviloften involves himself in this kind of consultation, which becomes by way of this a pact with thedevil."416

60. The Albert referred to above as a teacher of Aquinas is Albertus Magnus, Albert theGreat (1193-1280), the leading figure in Latin learning and natural science in the 13th century..The Speculum astronomiae (Mirror ofAstrology) is usually attributed to Albert, and is said byThorndike "to be one of the most important single treatises in the history of medieval astrology".(ibid, p. 692.) The book is chiefly concerned with judicial astrology, which is distinguished fromastronomy proper as "the science of the judgements of the stars". Thorndike quotes the author:"He declares that [astrology] turns man's thoughts toward God, revealing as it does the greatSource of all things. Furthermore, it is the bond between natural philosophy and mathematics. 'Forif the most high God in His Supreme wisdom so ordained this world that He, who is the livingGod of a lifeless heaven, wills to work in created things which are found in these four inferiorelements through deaf and dumb stars as instruments, and if concerning these we have onescience, namely, mathematics which teaches us in things caused to consider their Creator, andanother natural science which teaches us to find by experience in created things the Creator ofcreatures; what is more desirable for the investigator than to have a third science to instruct himhow this and that change of things mundane is brought to pass by the change of things

celestial? '"417

61. Of the termjudicial astrology, Richard Lemay says: "... beginning in the twelfth century,and stabilizing in the thirteenth, we find newly invented labels to designate various sciences tostudy the heavens. There is a general 'science of the stars' (scientia stellarum) as the disciplinedealing with the knowledge of the whole heavens, and then the 'science of the movements'(scientia motuum) for astronomy, together with a 'science of the judgments' (scientia iudiciorum /judicial astrology) for astrology."418

62. Lemay observes that in the Speculum astronomiae of Albertus Magnus, there is adistinction between astronomy, which is "mathematical", and astrology, which is "judicial",

416 Thomas Litt, Les corps cèleste dans l'univers de Saint Thomas d'Aquin (1963), p. 240-241.

417 Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 697.418 Richard Lemay, "The True Place of Astrology in Medieval Science and Philosophy", in Astrology, Scienceand Society, Historical Essays, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 64.

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although the two are inseparable parts of one science of the stars. This distinction can be tracedbacked to Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, but according to Lemay, Albertus Magnus took it directly from theIntroductorium Maius in Astronomiam of Abu Ma'shar (786-866), which had been translated fromArabic to Latin during the first half of the 12th century. Abu Ma'shar (or Albumasar) was a leadingauthority in astrology in medieval times, and according to Lemay translations of his works were amain source of the new interest in astronomy/astrology in the Latin world at the beginning of the12th century. Using the term "judicial astrology" to designate the kind of astronomy/astrologywhich prognosticates is traced by Lemay to the Latin translation by John of Seville in 1133 of aword in the Arabic title of Abu Ma'shar's Introductorium Maius. An Arabic word signifyingsomething like "authoritative pronouncements by a learned person" was translated by a wordwhich could mean "authoritative pronouncements by a judge".419

63. Of Roger Bacon (c. 12 14-1292), Thorndike says: "Bacon believed that by means ofastrology not only could the future be in large measure foretold, but also marvelous operationsand great alterations could be effected throughout the whole world, especially by choosingfavorable hours and by employing astronomical amulets and characters -- in other words, by thearts of elections and of images. As the babe at birth receives from the stars that fundamentalphysical constitution which lasts it through life, so any new-made object is permanently affected bythe disposition of the constellations at the moment of its making." (Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 673.)Bacon also connected astrology to the power of words. Thorndike says that for Bacon: "Wordsare the soul's most appropriate instrument and almost every miracle since the beginning of theworld has been performed by using them The rational soul influences the voice, which inturn affects the atmosphere and all objects contained therein. The physical constitution of thespeaker also has some influence, and finally the position of the stars must by all means be takeninto account. All this reasoining is equivalent to accepting the power of incantations, for asBacon states [in the Opus Maius], 'They are words brought forth by the exertion of the rationalsoul, and receive the virtue of the sky as they are pronounced Although the efficaciousemployment of words is primarily the function of the rational soul,' nevertheless 'the astronomercan form words in elect times which will possess unspeakable power' of transforming naturalonjects and even inclining human minds to obey him. Thus Bacon's 'astronomer' is really amagician and enchanter as well ..."420

64. Thorndike observes further that hardly any class or group of men in the later middle ageswere more given to astrology and even to some other occult arts and sciences than the friars. This isa noteworthy point, says Thorndike, because they furnished a majority of the theologians of theperiod and had a practical monopoly of the office of inquisitor, although inquisitors andtheologians have often been regarded as the bitterest and most inveterate foes of astrology andrelated arts.421 Thus Thorndike's view may conflict with that of Duhem who speaks, as we sawabove, of the Dominicans and Franciscans as zealously defending Catholic dogma against attacksby astrologers. Perhaps none of the friars Thorndike had in mind were of these orders.

65. Nicolas Oresme (1325-1382) delivered a number of extended attacks on astrology. Oneof his most fascinating works (to a mathematician) is concerned with whether or not the

419 Lemay, ibid., p. 67-68.

420 Thorndike, ibid., v. 2, p. 665, 673, 674.421 Thorndike, ibid., v. 3 (1934), p. 213.

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movements of the heavenly bodies are commensurable or incommensurable, in a treatise called Decommensurabilitate [or, in some manuscripts, incommensurabilitate] motuum celestium. In thetranslation by Edward Grant, instead of one or the other, the title contains commensurabilitatevel incommensurabilitate, so the title may be translated as On the commensurability orincommensurability of celestial motions.422 In Part I of this work, Oresme gives 25 propositionswhich will be true if the celestial motions are commensurable, and in Part II, 12 propositionswhich will be true if they are incommensurable. He then asks which of these is the case. In morerecent terms, it appears he was investigating whether or not the “motions” were all expressibleas rational (in the sense of rational numbers, or fractions with integer numerator anddenominator) – rational multiples of some unit (i.e., some length chosen to be standard, andcorresponding to the number 1). This sounds tantalizingly to be related to some quite recentinvestigations in celestial mechanics in the light of nonlinear Newtonian-type dynamics, and itsso-called “chaos” theory.

66. At this point, Oresme turns from mathematical demonstration to allegory. In a dream,the muse Arithmetic delivers an oration in favor of commensurability, and Geometry defendsincommensurability, and the author wakes up before the debate is decided. According toThorndike: "Arithmetic had contended with many citations of past authors thatincommensurability and irrational proportion would detract from the perfection, beauty, andharmony of the universe, and be unendurable to the heavenly Intelligences that move the orbs.'For if anyone should make a mechanical clock, would he not make all the wheels move asharmoniously as possible?' -- an interesting allusion to the then recent introduction of mechanicalclockworks. Arithmetic further pointed out that if you deny numerical proportion to the velocitiesof the heaven and stars, it will be impossible to predict any aspect or conjunction of the planets, orto foresee their effects, and that astrology would have never been discovered, all the astronomicaltables would be false, and the magnus annus of the philosophers and music of the spheres wouldbe impossible fictions. Under such circumstances why did God let man look at the stars and walkwith erect head?"423 Thus Arithmetic speaks for the strict periodicity and predictability of motionsof the stars.

67. Thorndike goes on: "Geometry replies that irrationality of proportion will not rob theheavens of their beauty or be inconsistent with regularity of movement. Variety is better thanuniformity of color; the song of changing cadence is sweeter than the noblest single strain.Geometry thinks it more pleasant, perfect, and congruent with Divinity not to have the samepositions and effects repeated but ever to produce new and dissimilar effects from the priorconstellations, Were all the celestial movements commensurable, the sun and moon would nevermeet throughout eternity exept in a few points of the sky, 'and similarly with the other aspects andremaining planets.' The music of the spheres is a matter of doubt anyway. but there might beproportion of sound without proportional velocities. There also is no agreement as to the magnusannus, and Geometry prefers that men should not be able to know all the future movements of thestars exactly and to predict all future events. But this conception that astrology lacks any precisebasis in astronomy for its prediction of future events, because we cannot be sure even whether themovements of the heavens are or are not commensurable and in proportion, while if they areincommensurable and with disproportionate velocities, there is no basis for a system of

422 Edward Grant, Nicole Oresme and the Kinematics of Circular Motion, 1971.423 Thorndike, ibid., v. 3, p. 405-406.

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forecasting from them, although one might still roughly date the coming occurrence of eclipsesand conjunctions: -- this is a point against astrology to which Oresme adverts again in his othertreatises."424 Thus Geometry speaks against strict periodicity and predictability of the motions ofthe stars, on the grounds that the ratios of their velocities may not be rational numbers (to usepresent terminology).

68. Edward Grant describes two kinds of comparison of magnitudes Oresme used todetermine commensurability or incommensurability between motions.425 To illustrate one ofthem, consider two bodies A and B which are moving on concentric circles with unequal butuniform angular velocities. Let the motion be measured from some starting points p and p' whichlie on a ray from the common center of both circles (and intersecting them to form overlappingradii). Let T(A) and T(B) stand for the times which the bodies take to move through angles A andB, respectively, when they start at the same instant from p and p'. If the measures of angles A andB (say, the lengths of arc traced out on their circles by the bodies A and B) are to each other astwo whole numbers, then the velocities (or speeds, or motions) are commensurable, and otherwisethey are incommensurable. That is, the velocities are commensurable if the ratio of the measuresof A to B equals the ratio of m to n for some whole numbers m and n. Instead of the angles orarcs traversed, Oresme also uses (this is the second kind of comparison) the number ofcirculations made by two bodies C and D. A circulation is the first return of a body from a pointon its circle, back to the same point. Let C and D make the same number of circulations on theircircles, and let T(C) and T(D) be the times taken by the bodies to make this number ofcirculations. The velocities of C and D are commensurable if the ratio of T(C) to T(D) is as oneinteger to another, i.e. if T(C) / T(D) is a rational number; otherwise the velocities areincommensurable.

69. The basic idea of strict periodicity (or, as Grant puts it, "cyclical regularity") beingprecluded by incommensurability seems not to have been original with Oresme, although Oresmeseems to have been the first to develop the idea to any extent. Grant discusses as predecessorsTheodosius of Bythynia (or, of Tripoli; born c. 180 A.D.), Johannes de Muris (diedc. 1350), Henry Bate (in 1281) and John Duns Scotus (about 1302 or 1303).426

70. Despite Oresme's strictures against astrology, including a treatise of his against princesdevoting themselves to astrology, his own patron, Charles V (Charles the Wise, reigned 1364-1380), employed many astrologers at his court. Thorndike says that in this period, the later 14thcentury, "wisdom and astrology were considered almost synonymous The Hundred Yearswar [1339-1453] provided the astrologers with as happy a predicting ground as did the BlackDeath [mid 14th century]."427

71. About 1425, Curatus de Ziessele, presumably a curate from Ziessele near Bruges(Belgium) wrote a Compendium of Natural Theology Taken from Astrological Truth. Accordingto Thorndike, the curate of Ziessele was not primarily interested in demonstrating the truth ofChristianity from the natural universe (like, for example, Raymond of Sebonde), but rather in

424 Thorndike, ibid., v. 3, p. 406.

425 Edward Grant, ibid., p. 7-8.426 ibid., Chapter 3.427 Thorndike, ibid., v. 3, p. 584.

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showing that astrology and astronomy demonstrate the unit and harmony of the spiritual andmaterial universe. Where previous writers (such as Jean Gerson) had tried to theologizeastrology and make it acceptable to theologians, Curatus de Ziessele, tries to astrologizetheology, and thus make theologians accept astrology. 4 2 8

72. In a similar spirit, Giovanni Nanni of Viterbo (c. 1432-1502), a Dominican friar, tried toshow that astrological science was in harmony with and confirmed scriptural revelation. Heillustrates, Thorndike says, the connection of humanism with astrology as well as the association ofastrology with theology. He is said to have been dear to popes Sixtus IV and Alexander VI, andbecame master of the sacred palace in 1499. The humanist Aeneas Sylvius who later becamepope Pius II felt that some knowledge of astrology was essential for a ruler. According toThorndike, "well certified instances of condemnations of astrologers as such by Christianauthorities are exceedingly rare, even when they taught the doctrine that religious changes wereforecast or produced by conjunctions of the planets."429

73. Paul III, who was pope from 1534 to 1549, was a believer in occult sciences, as wasPope Leo X, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and often praised as a patron of the Renaissance.Except at Paris, where there was considerable theological opposition to astrology, "the practice ofthat art," Thorndike says, "seldom seems to have involved a learned man in difficulties with thelaw during the first half of the sixteenth century." Among Protestant leaders, Philip Melanchthonwas very interested in various profane sciences and pseudo-sciences as well as in religious creedsand confessions, in the same way as learned men were in the circles of Pope Paul III. Thorndikeobserves: "There was no more reason for a Catholic and Protestant to disagree about herbs andgems, astrology and witchcraft, than there was for them to come to blows over Green grammarand prosody. These were neutral or rather universal territories open to men of every creed andcountry, and had been so since the day of Albertus Magnus and Albumasar. Luca Guarico, theItalian astrologer and Catholic bishop , had admirers at Wittenberg as well as at Rome. Afavorable astrological moment, it may be noted in this connection, had been selected for thefoundation of the university of Wittenberg, while its first rector, Martin Polich of Mellerstadt,was the author of numerous annual predictions."430

74. Of course there remained the question of free will. Among Protestant theologians, JohnCalvin, when speaking of predestination, recommends that we not press matters too far: "Whenwe attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things always were, and perpetually remain,under his eyes, so that to his knowledge there is nothing future or past, but all things are present.... We call predestination God's eternal decree, by which he determined with himself what hewilled to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life isforeordained for some, eternal damnation for others." But Calvin says of "certain men nototherwise bad": "... let them remember that when they inquire into predestination they arepenetrating the sacred precincts of divine wisdom. If anyone with carefree assurance breaks intothis place, he will not succeed in satisfying his curiosity and he will enter a labyrinth from which hecan find no exit. For it is not right for man unrestrainedly to search out things that the Lord haswilled to be hid in himself, and to unfold from eternity itself the sublimest wisdom, where he

428 Thorndike, ibid., v. 4, 1934, p. 258.

429 ibid., p. 263, 393, 544.430 ibid., v. 5 (1941), p. 159, 251, 307, 378-379, 419.

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would have us revere but not understand that through this also he should fill us with wonder. Hehas set forth by his Word the secrets of his will that he has decided to reveal to us. These hedecided to reveal in so far as he foresaw that they would concern us and benefit us."431

75. Calvin opposed some kinds of astrology. In 1561, a work by Calvin was translated intoEnglish under the title An Admonicion against Astrology Judiciall and other curiosities that raignnow in the world. According to Calvin, astrology "hath been rejected by a common consent aspernicious by Mankind. [Yet] at this day it hath gotte the upper hand in such sorte that manywhych thynk themselves witty men ... are at it were bewitched therewith'." However, it was notCalvin's purpose to reject astrology as a whole. Calvin says: "Now every man of soundjudgementwell knows that Moses meant the same as what I have said above, about true astrology. If the starsare signs to show us the season for sowing or planting, for bleeding or giving medicines, forcutting wood, that is not to say that they are signs to show whether we should put on new clothes,or deal in goods on a Monday rather than a Tuesday, and so on, things which have no connectionwith the stars."

76. While Calvin deplored the archaisms, excesses and abuses of astrology, he could notbring himself to condemn astrology completely, nor could he deny that eclipses and comets areportents for the affairs of men. He said: "However, I do not deny that when God wishes to stretchout His hand to bring about some judgement worthy of memory by the world, he sometimes warnsus by means of comets." In fact, Calvin had to proceed prudently. Since he stood for a kind ofreturn to the Old Testament, he could not ignore the bond between God and the heavenly bodies.Calvin was concerned with the distinction between true and false astrology. The Arminians of thisera rejected astrology on the grounds that men have free will, but the Calvinists, on account oftheir determinism, centered more on the impiety of prying into God's plans. 432

77. Keith Thomas observes that all post-Reformation theologians taught that nothing couldhappen in this world without God's permission. They denied the very possibility of chance oraccident. "That which we call fortune," wrote the Elizabethan bishop, Thomas Cooper, "is nothingbut the hand of God, working by causes and for causes that we know not. Chance or fortune aregods devised by man and made by our ignorance of the true, almighty and everlasting God.""Fortune and adventure,' declared John Knox, 'are the words of Paynims [pagans], thesignification whereof ought in no wise to enter into the heart of the faithful .... That which yescoffingly call Destiny and Stoical necessity ... we call God's eternal election and purposeimmutable."433

78. Thomas notes that Knox was echoing the words of St. Basil, for the denial of theheathen concept of Fortune or Destiny had always been a popular Christian theme. "Yet," saysThomas, "there is some reason for thinking that the Reformation period saw a new insistence on

431 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559, translated by Ford Lewis Battles, 1960, xxi.3, v. 2, p.926, 922-923.432 Jacques Halbronn, "The Revealing Process of Translation and Criticism", in Astrology, Science and Society,1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 205-207; also Hugh G. Dick, introduction to Albumazar: A Comedy (1615) byThomas Tomkis, edited by Dick, 1944, p. 22-23; the quotations from Calvin are from Halbronn's article; the originalsermon of Calvin is Admonitio adversus astrologiam, 1549.

433 Quoted by Thomas.

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God's sovereignty. Whereas Aquinas had stressed that the notion of Divine Providence did notexclude the operation of chance or luck, a sixteenth-century writer like Bishop Pilkington coulddeclare categorically that there was no such thing as chance. Medieval Christians from Boethius toDante had maintained the pagan tradition of the goddess Fortuna side by side with a belief inGod's omnipotence, but for Tudor theologians the very idea of Fortune was an insult to God'ssovereignty .... Every Christian thus had the consolation of knowing that life was not a lottery,but reflected the working-out of God's purposes. If things went wrong he did not have to blamehis luck but could be assured that God's hand was at work: the events of this world were notrandom but ordered."434

79. Thomas explains the post-Reformation emphasis on God's omnipotence as founded onthe universal reluctance to recognize that the rewards and punishments of this world don't always goto those that (we think) deserve them. The doctrine of Providence was an attempt to impose orderon the apparent randomness of human fortunes. Thus Thomas' explanation of the turn towarddeterminism after the Reformation is the same as the explanation given from antiquity on of the riseof determinism among the Stoics. And in both cases, there was a turn toward astrology. Thestrictures of St. Augustine against astrology lost force among many. In his 20's, Augustine says, heconsulted "those imposters, the astrologers, because I argued that they offered no sacrifices and saidno prayers to any spirit to aid their divination."

80. Augustine goes on: "Nevertheless, true Christian piety rightly rejects and condemnswhat they do we must remember Our Lord's words to the cripple: You have recovered yourstrength. Do not sin any more, for fear that worse should befall you. This is our whole salvation,but the astrologers try to do away with it. They tell us that the cause of sin is determined in theheavens and we cannot escape it, and that this or that is the work of Venus or Saturn or Mars.They want us to believe that man is guiltless, flesh and blood though he is and doomed to diedespite his pride. Instead they have it that the blame is to be laid on the Creator and Ruler of theheavens and the stars, none other than our God, himself the very source of justice, from whom itssweetness is derived -- on you, O God, who will award to every man what his acts have deserved,you who will never disdain a heart that is humble and contrite."435 But one can maintain that ifGod is omnipotent and omniscient, then choices to sin or not are equally predestined, and those whowill turn away from sin are elected in advance of their reform. And Christianity has devices of itsown for the abatement of guilt.

81. In place of unacceptable moral chaos, Protestant theologians of the 17th century erectedthe edifice of God's omnipotent sovereignty. It was impossible for even the most optimisticexponent of the doctrine of Providence to maintain that virtue was always rewarded. Thus it wasnecessary to concede that only the justice of the next world would fully compensate for theapparent capriciousness of this one. All one could do was argue that there are many instances inwhich the link between morality and material success is too close to be ignored. By the later 17thcentury even this proposition seemed unconvincing to some. It had never been clear by whatmechanism God's rewards and punishments in this world had been distributed. Miracles as suchhad been relegated by most Protestants to the days of the early Church. Under the influence of themechanical philosophy even the Biblical miracles began to lose their

434 Keith Thomas, Re l ig ion and the Decl ine o f Magic , 1971, p. 79.435 Augustine, Confe ss ions , Book IV, Ch 3, translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin, 1961, p. 73.

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credibility. However, belief in God's immediate providences did not wither away altogether.Many intelligent people of the time found it impossible to believe that catastrophic events like theGreat Plague of 1665 had only natural causes. 18th century epidemics, fires and earthquakescontinued to be hailed as acts of God. Victorian clergymen sometimes regarded venereal disease asa punishment for fornication, and recognized in a cattle plague a retribution for the ill-treatmentof farm labourers.436

82. The theologians of the post -Reformation period were imposing a doctrine of God'somnipotence on a populace long accustomed to other explanations. They had been able to explainmisfortune in terms of the working of good and evil spirits, or as the result of neglecting omens andobservances, or as random and capricious. The doctrine of providence was meant to override theseother theories. It also drew a more direct connection between misfortune and guilt by holding therewas an element of punishment for past offences in many of God's judgments. In the 17th centurymany writers on economic affairs taught that the poor had only themselves to blame. It was theiridleness and improvidence which had landed them where they were. This was no doubtcomfortable doctrine for the well-to-do, but it can hardly have appealed to the sizable proportionof the population which never had any hope of dragging itself above subsistence level. The clergytherefore tried to console the poor with the doctrine of divine providence, stressing that there wasa purpose behind everything, even if an unknown one. "It was a gloomy philosophy," Thomassays, "teaching men how to suffer, and stressing the impenetrability of God's will." It is notsurprising that many should have eventually turned to non-religious modes of thought --scientific, perhaps, or astrological -- which offered a more direct prospect of relief and a moreconvincing explanation of why it was that some men prospered while others literally perished bythe wayside.437

83. On the relation to astrology to religion, Franz Boll says that astrology wants to bereligion and science at the same time, and that this is its very essence. In former times (Boll sayspre-Kantian), the relation between religion and science appeared to many people as an advantage,not as objectionable or dangerous. Faith, for many, was confirmed by the scientific results ofastrology. And, no matter how often he was disappointed, an honest searcher might have hishopes renewed by the strength of spiritual experience.438 In this view, astrology appears as a toolof reason, and the action of stars on lives of men is an action of reason, imposed in a world lacedwith chance and chaos.

84. But Jean de Meun, one of the two authors of the Roman de la Rose, the secularallegorical poem about Love, written in the 13th century, says something different: "Men say thatthe fates had decreed such deaths for them and had set up such destinies from the times when theywere conceived. And since they took their births under such constellations that by strict necessity,without any other possibility, they have no power to avoid such a death, however much it shouldgrieve them, they must accept it. But I know very well that it is quite true that however theheavens work to give them those natural ways that incline them to do those things that drew themto this end, obedient to the material that goes about to bend their hearts in this

436 Thomas, ibid., p. 107,109-110.

437 Thomas, ibid., p. 111-112.438Franz Boll, Sternglaube und Sterndeutung, Die Geschichte und das Wesen der Astrologie (Star Faith and StarMeaning, the History and Essence of Astrology, with Carl Bezold, 4th edition, 1931, p. 72-73.

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way, even so, they can, through teaching, through clean, pure nourishment, by following goodcompany that is endowed with sense and virtues, or through certain remedies, provided that they aregood and pure, and also through goodness of understanding, they can, I say, obtain another result,provided that, like intelligent people, they have bridled their natural ways. For when a man orwoman wants to turn his spirit away from its own nature, against his good and against right,Reason can turn him back, provided that he believes in her alone. Then the situation will goanother way. It can indeed be in another way, whatever the heavenly bodies do, and they certainlyhave very great power as long as they don't go against Reason, for every wise man knows thatthey are not the masters of Reason, nor did they bring her to birth." 439 Reason, the poet says,reason bridling the natural person, can overcome the dictates of the heavens, however reasonablethey might be.

85. The idea that reason can overcome the power of the stars was an old one, much olderthan the Roman de la Rose. "Vir sapiens dominabitur astris" -- "A wise man will dominate (orrule) the stars" -- is a saying often quoted or paraphrased in the Middle Ages. It was frequentlyattributed to Ptolemy, and specifically to the Almagest, but is said by Wedel not to occur in theworks of Ptolemy. With Thomas Aquinas, the phrase acquired an ethical significance, and Jean deMeun appears to have followed Aquinas. In any case, a whole literature grew around the ideaexpressed in the adage. Yet its original meaning was that a scientific astrologer or learnedastronomer, or someone who takes the advice of such an expert, will dominate the stars, beingable to use knowledge of the heavens for his own ends. With Aquinas, the saying acquired a newmeaning. The "wise man" became a man of character who gains control over the influence of thestars by mastering the inclinations caused or indicated by them. In John Gower's ConfessioAmantis (1390-1393), the wise man becomes not so much a man of character as a man of prayer,who only can come to rule the stars by the grace of God.440

86. The Roman de la Rose was only one among many medieval romances from which wecan extract attitudes toward astrology of people who were not university professors. Wedel says:"The attitude of the romances toward astrology hardly admits of logical analysis. A narrator was aslittle hampered in the Middle Ages by questions of science or of ethics as he is today. It may besaid, in general, that astrology, to the popular mediaeval mind, was a wonderful science, vaguelydefined, and seldom condemned, whose omnipotence was proverbial. It is spoken of everywhereas the chief of the seven arts, and was hardly distinguished from necromancy and magic. Thereality of its power was never doubted. By reason of its being a learned foreign importation [fromthe "Orient", i.e. the Arabs] ... astrology could acquire a fame in popular literature evenexceeding that which it held among the astronomers of the schools."441

87. As the age of the scientific revolution (or evolution) of the 17th century approached,astrology took an experimental turn. Thorndike says that in the second half of the 16th century,there were noteworthy efforts to improve astrology and make it more scientific. Numerousattempts were made to gather data, collect large numbers of particular cases, and to establishdependable rules of prediction on the basis of them. This was done especially with natal

439 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Th e Ro m a n c e o f t h e R o s e (de Lorris, 1230-35; de Meun, c.1275), translated by Charles Dahlberg, 1971, lines 17059-17100, p. 286-287.440 Wedel, ibid., p. 135-142.441 Wedel, ibid., p. 108.

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horoscopes. However, annual predictions for society as a whole continued to be made, andconjunctions, eclipses and comets were still taken as a basis for social and politicalprognostication. 4 4 2

88. Thorndike observes that quite a number of the writers on astrology in this era wereacademics, or -- in the terminology of the time -- scholastics. Of course, there were many others. Atthe end of vol. 6 of his A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Thorndike notes that in hisvolumes 5 and 6 alone, which cover the 16th century, over 3000 people are discussed inconnection with magic and astrology, including 1200 writers and scholars, 300 printers, andconsiderably over 300 "patrons, patients, princes, prelates and other lay figures and passiveparticipants in the play of ideas." The general index to these 2 volumes also contains about 1700topics and names of things, in addition to the names of the more than 3000 persons. Among these3000 persons there are, in addition to writers of the 16th century, over 30 Jewish and Biblicalauthors, over 100 Greek and Byzantine, nearly 40 Latin classical writers, nearly 60 Arabicauthors, a dozen church fathers, about 25 early medieval Latin writers and about 25 from the 12thcentury, about 70 each for the 13th and 14th centuries, and about 130 from the 15th, as well assome 140 writers of the later 17th and 18th centuries, 150 of the 19th century, and 190 of the20th.443 This gives some idea of the both the magnitude of Thorndike's work, and the prominenceof magic and astrology during these periods.

89. Similar statements can be made about Pierre Duhem, and the 10 volumes of hishistorical work, Le Système du Monde444. Thorndike was concerned to show how modern sciencehad been influenced by the practice of magic and divinatory arts such as astrology. Duhem wasconcerned to show how modern science had been influenced by Christian doctrines, and especiallyhow from the 14th century on, the "grandiose edifice" of Aristotelian physics was doomed to bedestroyed, since "the Christian faith had undermined its essential principles", and observationalastronomy had rejected its consequences.445

90. Still, Thorndike and Duhem to a large extent agree on the status and influence ofastrology in the later Middle Ages. Duhem says, for example: "The most authoritative theologiansone encounters in the 13th century all maintain the same attitude with respect to astrology. Theyall admit that the movements of the stars exert on the bodies on earth multiple actions anddetermine numerous changes. They all refuse any efficacy [of the stars] on reasoning souls whosewills remain, with regard to celestial phenomena, exempt from all constraints. Moreover, the freechoice of our will would be a vain thing if, in the world of bodies, certain operations were not inour power. It is therefore necessary that even the world of inferior bodies escape in part from thenecessary law imposed by the circulation of the heavenly sphere. It is necessary that there remainhere some contingency. On the other hand, if it is true that our will does not undergo on the thepart of the stars any influence which determines it directly, it is true also that the celestialmovements modify the temperament and the constitution of our bodies and, by that, can incline ourfree will in one direction or another, without however reaching the point of imposing the choicewhich it makes. Such are the four theses that the

442Thorndike, ibid., v. 6, p. 99.

4 4 3 ibid., v. 6,p. 574.444Pierre Duhem, Le Système du Monde, Histoire des Doctrines Cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, 1913.4 4 5 Duhem, l. c., v. 7, p. 3.

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theologians agree to support. They hardly distinguish themselves from one another except bynuances, according as astrological divination exercises on their reason a more or less strongattraction."446

91. After discussing the adversaries of astrology, especially Nicolas Oresme (c. 1325-1382)and Jean Gerson (1363-1429) in the 14th and early 15th centuries, Duhem says: "And now, thereader will perhaps pose this question: The most ardent adversaries of astrology never went so faras to deny all influence of the stars on things here below. Nicolas Oresme and Jean Gerson grantthem at least a general influence. Isn't this a last and distressing concession to astrology? Godforbid that they had repudiated all of astrology! For beneath its monstrous errors, it contained thegerm of a great and fruitful truth. We have heard the scholastic doctors, from William ofAuvergne to Themo the son of the Jew, compare the influence of the stars on things on earth tothat which a lodestone exerts on iron to attract it. In fact, don't we also admit that the stars attractat a distance all the bodies on earth like a magnet attracts iron? The masters of the Middle Ageswould no doubt hail our doctrine of universal gravitation as the ultimate consequence of theirsuppositions about the influence of the stars. This opinion, moreover, was indeed that of the firstadversaries of gravitation. When Kepler sketched the first features of this hypothesis, whenNewton made it emerge from his Mathematical Princles of Natural Philosophy, they heardpeople like Galileo, Huyghens and Fatio de Duillers reproach them for their recourse to thoseoccult virtues, to those specific qualities which the scholastics used to explain magneticattractions."

92. “It is therefore indeed true that relieved of an encumbering mass of dross, astrologywas to leave at the bottom of the crucible an ingot of an infinitely precious metal, the doctrine ofuniversal gravity. If, moreover, most of the manifestations of this gravity remained hidden from theeyes of the scholars of the Middle Ages. there is one they knew very well, that they studied withthe most lively interest, that they cited with eagerness as an example which catches hold of theinfluence of the stars on things on earth. The astrologers found convincing proof of theirassumptions in the phenomenon of the tides."447

446Duhem, ibid., v. 8, p. 347.4 4 7 Duhem, ibid., v. 8, p. 500-501.

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Chapter 7. From Ptolemy to Newton

1. In his book Spiritus Mundi Northrup Frye speaks of the relation of the Ptolemaic andCopernican world systems, and of astrology and astronomy, which he takes, as a literary critic, to be"a collision between two mythologies, two pictures or visions, not of reality, but of man's sense ofthe meaning of reality in relation to himself."448 Frye contrasts the two visions: "The geocentricview had on its side the religious feeling that the moral and natural orders had been made by thesame God, that man was the highest development of nature, that God had died and risen again forman, and that therefore the notion of a plurality of worlds could be dismissed." Moreover, thePtolemaic view was also supported by the mythical analogy between the macrocosm, theUniverse, and the microcosm, Man. The macrocosm was finite in both time and space. "Just asman lives for only seventy years, so the universe was created to last for seven thousand years, sixthousand years of history and a thousand years of millennium, corresponding to the six days ofcreation and the Sabbath of rest. Creation took place four thousand years before the birth ofChrist, who was born in 4 B.C.: therefore the millennium will begin in 1996. However theheliocentric view had some mythological trump-cards too. The sun is the source of light, andtherefore the symbol of consciousness. And the Renaissance brought with it a new and expandedsense of consciousness, a feeling that consciousness represented something that tore man loosefrom the lower part of nature and united him with a higher destiny." But, Frye says, "of course, ithappens to be true that the earth goes around the sun, and not true that the sun goes around theearth."

2. Is it false that the sun goes around the earth? Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld say:"Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not onlythose moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? If thiscan be done, our troubles will be over. We shall then be able to apply the laws of nature to anyCS. The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy andCopernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification.The two sentences, "the sun is at rest and the earth moves," or "the sun moves and the earth is atrest," would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS. Could we builda real relativistic physics valid in all CS; a physics in which there would be no place for absolute,but only for relative motion? This is indeed possible! [general relativity]." 449

3. Frye asserts that when mythologies collide, it is doubtless an advantage to have thetruth, or more of the truth, on one's side -- but not a clinching advantage. "The words 'sunrise'and 'sunset' are as familiar to us as ever," he says. "We 'know' that what they describe is reallyan illusion, but they are metaphorically efficient, and man can live indefinitely with metaphor."Science only destroys the unscientific, and separates itself from mythology. "The autonomy ofscience," says Frye, "goes along with its reliance on mathematics, which can apparentlypenetrate much further into the external world than words can do."450

4. As to mathematics and words, Galileo says: "Philosophy is written in this grand book,the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood

448Northrup Frye, Spiri tus Mundi , 1976, p. 70-89.

449 Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolu tion of Physics 1938, p 212)450 Frye, l.c.

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unless one first learns to comprehend the language of mathematics, and its characters aretriangles, circles and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible tounderstand a single word of it; without these one wanders about in a dark labyrinth."451 ForGalileo as for Kepler, and for Euclid before them, geometry is at the core of mathematics --concepts of number, or at any rate numbers other than integers, depend on concepts of geometry.

5. It is one thing to say the heavens can be read like a book of words, and another to saythat they can be comprehended with geometry. Marsilio Ficino wrote in his Theologia platonica(late 15th century): "The notions of divine beings are made clear by the disposition of the heavens,as if through letters."452 Earlier still there is the statement of Bernard Silvester in his De mundiuniversitate (12th century), as reported by Thorndike: "Nous or Intelligence says to Nature, 'Iwould have you behold the sky, inscribed with a multiform variety of images, which, like a bookwith open pages, containing the future in cryptic letters, I have revealed to the eyes of the morelearned.'"453 Ficino and Silvester were talking about astrology.

6. Galileo inherited his views of the importance of geometry from classical Greekantiquity, and the 16th and 17th century scientists were not the first to revive it. RobertGrosseteste (c. 1230 C.E.): "There is an immense usefulness in the consideration of lines,angles, and figures, because without them natural philosophy cannot be understood. They areapplicable in the universe as a whole and in its parts, without restriction, and their validityextends to related properties, such as circular and rectilinear motion, nor does it stop at actionand passion, whether as applied to matter or sense ... For all causes of natural effects can bediscovered by lines, angles and figures, and in no other way can the reason for their actionpossibly be known."454

7. There is something in mathematics besides words and language, something more thanalgebra. There are the abstract pictures and visions of geometry. Beyond that, there are theintuitions of mathematicians, instituted, it appears, by basic structures and processes of ouruniverse. In a narrow sense, mathematical "intuition" refers to geometric visualization. In a largersense it refers to any mathematical knowledge which is not based --perhaps not base-able -- onformalized logic or language, and proofs formulated using them. There are some who appear tohave direct insight into relations of numerical, spatial and temporal abstractions, both among theabstractions themselves and as they apply to other things. Formal proofs follow after, if they can befound at all. If this is so, mathematics is not merely a part of logic, as Bertrand Russell and otherlogicians have maintained.

8. What about Frye's view of mythology? Mythology, he holds, is not primarily anattempt to depict reality, not a primitive form of science or philosophy, but an attempt toarticulate the greatest human concerns. However, mythology, he says, tends to project itself onthe outer world and harness science with pseudo-scientific presuppositions. Then science has to

451 Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore (The Assayer), translated by Stillman Drake in Discoveries andOpinions of Galileo, 1957, p. 237-23 8.452 Quoted by Eugenio Garin in Astrology in the Renaissance (1983, o. 69), translation of Lo Zodiacodella Vita (1976).453 Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923-1958, v. 2, p. 105.

454 Robert Grosseteste De lineis, angulis etfigures, c. 123 0;quoted by James McEvoy in The PhilosophyofRobert Grosseteste, 1982, p. 168.

destroy such mythological thinking in its own area. This doesn't mean that the mythologicalthinking should be destroyed in the areas to which it belongs. Mythology has its own spheres andfunctions, and what takes place is a separation of mythology and science. Frye quotes BernardShaw to the effect that if William the Conqueror had been told by a bishop that the moon was 77miles from the earth, he would have thought that a very proper distance for the moon, inasmuch as7 is a sacred number. As science destroyed the unscientific in its concerns, what Frye calls"symmetrical pattern-making" went underground into occult science, into alchemy, astrology,kabbalism and magic. But of course, theoretical physicists and cosmologists are makers ofsymmetrical patterns par excellence. Perhaps Frye has in mind some kind of Baconian "inductive"science, in which one collects pieces of information (probably dry and unexciting in themselves)and somehow extracts from them hypotheses and theories after the fact of gather ing theinformation. This is not the way of theoretical physics or mathematics.

9. As an example of the gradual separating of poetic and scientific modes of thinking,Frye takes astrology. Astrology is, he says, like the science of astronomy, a study of the stars, butit studies the stars from a geocentric point of view: it is interested mainly in the influences thatthe movements of stars are believed to have on human concerns. Geocentricity is not a necessaryconcomitant of astrology, as we have seen. Putting that aside, however, it is charming to think thatwhile it seems the physical influence on our characters of the planet Mars is negligible, Marsmay have a poetical influence on those who are told it occupies a special position in theirhoroscopes -- no matter what its position at their births.

10. Frye states that it is conceivable that astrology will eventually validate its claim to be acoherent subject, but in the meantime, the popularity of astrology (he was writing in the earlier1970's) indicates a growing acceptance of a kind of thinking poets use. In this way, astrologywould not be empty, no matter what its scientific status. In the scientific view of things, Frye says,the starry universe died during the course of the 16th century. In a metaphorical sense, this iscontrary to the popular, and even the scientific works (if you know how to read them) of modernastronomers, cosmologists and physicists. But I suppose Frye means that current astronomers nolonger consider celestial bodies to be alive in the way that, say, Plato and Aristotle did. Astrologypreserves something of the view that the sky is the symbol of the divine order of a personalcreator. By the time we get to the prologue to Goethe's Faust, says Frye, "the conception of God asthe infinitely skillful juggler of planets is only a subject for parody." Frye cites Byron's early 19thcentury “Vision of the Last Judgement”:

The angels all were singing out of tune,And hoarse with having little else to do,Excepting to wind up the sun and moonOr curb a runaway young star or two ...

It was Darwin, Frye observes, who completed the revolution in perspective that Copernicushad begun. The doctrine of evolution, he considers, made time as huge and frightening as space.The past, after Darwin, was no more emotionally reassuring than the skies had come to be. Fryeconcludes that we live in more than one world. We live in an actual world, our physicalenvironment in time and space, the world studied mainly by the natural or physical sciences. At thesame time we live in worlds we want to live in, and worlds we are creating out of our

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environment. "This world," Frye claims, "is always geocentric, always anthropocentric, alwayscentered on man and man's concerns." 455

11. Frye proposes the following chronology, for astrology (presumably in England):

1473. Astrology and astronomy are much the same subject, and most of those who studythe stars are interested primarily in astrology .

1573. The situation is not very diferent, despite Copernicus. There had always beentheological reservations about astrology, mainly on the score of an implied fatalism, and thesehad been increased by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. But still astrology wasgenerally accepted as a reasonable hypothesis, and in the next generation Kepler was anenergetic caster of horoscopes.

1673. This is the age of the Royal Society, and by now most of the star -gazers areinterested only in astronomy ....

1773. With the discovery of Uranus imminent, belief and interest in astrology isabandoned by most educated people.

1873. Astrology is firmly consigned to the scrap-heap of exploded superstitions.

1973. Astrology is a major industry, with newspapers printing horoscopes, a largenumber of books expounding the subject, and a great many practicing astrologers plying theirtrade. At the same time astrology has separated from astronomy: the two studies are carried onby diferent people and their literatures are addressed to diferent publics. There are many who'believe in' astrology, i.e. would like to feel that there is 'something in it', but Ishould imaginethat relatively few of them are astronomers."

12. I suppose Frye doesn't mean us to take his chronology of astrology too soberly. Aperhaps more soberly seriously chronology of the fortunes of astrology in England for the years1642-1800 has been given by Patrick Curry. Briefly, astrology flourished in England in themiddle years of the 17th century-- from about the beginning of the Puritan revolution in 1642 to theRestoration in 1660. In many respects, a decline began in 1660. During the course of the 18thcentury, omen astrology continued to decline, and "high" astrology, meant as seriouscosmological or philosophical explanation by educated people, practically died out. However,"popular" astrology survived. Curry mentions the annual Moore's Vox Stellarum ("Voice of theStars"), known as Moore's Almanack. As well as simple ephemerides, these provided yearlyastrological guidance of the omen sort -- predictions about the weather, agriculture, politics,wars, and natural disasters. By 1738, this was outselling all its rivals at 25,000 copies a year. Itsprintings rose to 107,000 copies a year in 1768, 353,000 in 1800 and peaked at 560,000 in 1839.John Clare described in 1827 a typical farmer seated in a tavern and reading

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4 5 5 Frye, ibid.

Old Moore's annual prop heciesOfflooded fields and clouded skies;Whose Almanac's thumb'd pages swarmWith frost and snow and many a storm,And wisdom, gossip 'dfrom the stars,Ofpolitics and bloody wars.

He shakes his head, and still proceeds,Nor doubts the truth of what he reads. 4 5 6

13. Bernard Capp concludes from his study of English almanacs that, like astrologyitself, they were at their peak in the Elizabethan and Stuart periods, and showed decay by the18th century, at any rate among the educated. The decay was gradual. There was a lively debateon the validity of astrology in the mid 16th century. A similar debate in France at that timeproved to be a decisive turning point for astrology there, leading to its devaluation. The Englishepisode was less decisive. In the second half of the 16th century, no major scientist seriouslydevoted his efforts to astrology, and the Royal Society, the universities and the College ofPhysicians often displayed hostility toward it. Yet starting from the 1640's, interest in a reformedastrology increased dramatically. In the 17th century, belief in astrology was never extinguished,even in the upper classes of society, but scientists increasingly turned away from it.457

14. Morris Jastrow asserts (in 1911) that in England, Jonathan Swift can fairly claimcredit for having given the death-blow to astrology with his famous squib, the Prediction for theYear 1708, by Isaac Bickerstaf, Esq. Swift begins by professing profound belief in the art, butthen points out the vagueness and absurdity of present practices. He then proceeds to describe amore excellent way: "My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I mention it to show how ignorantthese sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns: it refers to Partridge the almanac-maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly dieupon the 29th of March next about eleven at night of raging fever. Therefore I advise him toconsider of it and settle his affairs in time." There followed a letter giving an account of the deathof Partridge on the very day and nearly at the hour mentioned. In vain, the astrologer protestedthat he was still alive, and got a literary friend to write a pamphlet to prove it. He also publishedhis almanac for 1709. Swift, in his reply, abused him for his lack of manners in disagreeing witha gentleman like himself, and answered his arguments one by one. In particular, he declared thatpublication of another almanac was irrelevant as evidence for his continued existence, "forGadbury, Poor Robin, Dove and Way do yearly publish their almanacs, though several of themhave been dead since before the Revolution." Of course Swift was referring to almanacs beingissued under the names of their first and former publishers. Jastrow concludes: "Nevertheless afield is found even to this day for almanacs of a similar type, and for popular belief in them."458

456 Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power, Astrology in Early Modern England, 1989, p. 101-102. Curry proposesthat the survival of popular astrology was a class phenomenon.457 Bernard Capp, English Almanacs, 1500-1800, Astrology and the Popular Press, 1979, p. 276-278.458 cf. Morris Jastrow, Encyclopedia Britanica, 11th edition, 1910-1911, article "Astrology", v. 2, p. 799- 800.

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15. Jacques Halbronn comments that in the late 17th and early18th century attacks onastrology often had a forbidding character which failed to undermine its appeal for large sectors ofthe population. Laughter, as prescribed by Swift, was often a more effective medicine. However,Halbronn notes that Swift had been preceded in this genre by, among others, Franois Rabelais.The latter's Pantagruline Prognostication was a sort of prognostication "for all years", whichrevealed the truisms and banalities of this kind of astrological discourse.459

16. Among reasons long put forward for the decline in the hold of astrology over theeducated classes, there are the discoveries of astronomers, with the telescope or otherwise, thatthe heavens are not perfect or unchanging (novae, sun spots, mountains on the moon), thediscovery of new "planets" (which is what Galileo called the moons of Jupiter he had discoveredwith his telescope), and the realization that stellar distances are much greater than had beenbelieved. Perhaps also involved was the transition from a belief in an Aristotelian-Ptolemaicuniverse of finite extent to a belief in a decentralized universe of infinite extent.460 There wasalso a change in attitudes of churchmen toward astrology.

17. Capp says: "Robert Boyle and others were convinced that science could strengthenChristianity. From the harmony and splendour of the universe they felt able to prove theexistence of a divine Creator. They depicted a universe which was regular and ordered, shaped bythe hand of God but run according to the constant laws he had created In this current ofreligious thought, which by 1700 represented the orthodox view [in England], there was no placefor a God repeatedly interfering in his own laws. Nor, by extension, could there be room for thestars as the instruments of such intervention, and still less for astrologers as the self-appointedinterpreters of God's will."461 This no doubt applies to astrological predictions which could beoverturned, but it would seem to strengthen a strictly deterministic astrology. Astrologers mightdiscover rather than interpret God's immutable will by employing laws according to which thestars influence people -- if only they knew the laws. However, the scientists were moresuccessful at discovering laws in their domain than the astrologers were in theirs.

18. Patrick Curry says: "Often people wanted more specific and personal advice, onurgent matters, than was available from a book or almanac. Then they had recourse to the local'wise' or 'cunning' man, or woman. While it is impossible to estimate numbers, it seems that thisfigure too had disappeared more from 'Books and Talk' than from 'the World'."462 Such so-calledcunning persons, Curry says, remained a recognized influence well into the nineteenth century,combining -- for the poor -- services of medicine, divination and magical protection, all with astrong though primitive astrological component. Of course, we still have our local fortune tellers inthe United States today.

459 Jacques Halbronn, "The Revealing Process of Translation and Criticism", in Astrology, Science andSociety, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 212.460 As described by Alexander Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, 1957. Most physicalcosmologists today believe the universe to be of finite extent, but expanding -- the old finite universe was of fixedsize, once and for all.461 Capp, ibid., p. 280.

462 Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power, Astrology in Early Modern England, 1989, p. 102.) (Curry isreferring to a remark made by Mrs. Hester Thrale in 1790: "Superstition is said to be driven out of the World -- no suchThing, it is only driven out of Books and Talk."

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19. John Melton in his attack on astrology, Astrologaster or the Figure-Caster, 1620,describes how he consulted an astrological fortune-teller of this sort about a gold chain he hadlost. He is admitted to the astrologer's house and led upstairs by a small boy. Then, Melston says:"Before a Square Table, covered with a greene Carpet, on which lay a huge Booke in Folio, wideopen, full of strange Characters, such as the Aegyptians and Chaldaeans were never guiltie of, notfarre from that, a silver Wand, a Surplus [surplice?], a Watering Pot, with all the superstitious orrather fayned Instruments of his cousening [cheating] Art. And to put a fairer colour on his blackand foule Science, on his head hee had a foure-cornered Cap, on his backe a faire Gowne (butmade of a strange fashion) in his right hand he held an Astrolabe, in his left a MathematicalGlasse [telescope?]. At the first view, there was no man that came to him (if hee were of anyfashion) could offer him for his advice lesse than a Iacobus [a coin on the order of a pound orguinea], and the meanest halfe a Peece [half of a lesser coin], although hee peradventure (ratherthan have nothing) would be contented with a brace of Two-pences."463

20. Nearly a century and a half later, Tobias Smollett, in his novel The Adventures of SirLauncelot Greaves, 1762, gives a similar description of such a person, an astrologer consulted byTimothy Crab shaw, groom and squire to Sir Launcelot: "He was dragged upstairs like a bear tothe stake, not without reluctance and terror, which did not at all abate at sight of the conjurer, withwhom he was immediately shut up by his conductress, after she had told him in a whisper that hemust deposit a shilling in a little black coffin, supported by a human skull and thigh-bonescrossed, on a stoll covered with black baize, that stood in one corner of the apartment. The squire,having made this offer with fear and trembling, ventured to survey the objects around him, whichwere very well calculated to augment his confusion. He saw divers skeletons hung by the head,the stuffed skin of a young alligator, a calf with two heads, and several snakes suspended from theceiling, with the jaws of a shark, and a starved weasel. On another funeral table he beheld twospheres, between which lay a book open, exhibiting outlandish characters and mathematicaldiagrams. On one side stood an ink-standish with paper, and behind this desk appeared theconjurer himself, in sable vestments, his head so overshadowed with hair that, far fromcontemplating his features, Timothy could distinguish nothing but a long white beard, which, foraught he knew, might have belonged to a four -legged goat, as well as to a two -legged astrologer

"

21. "[The conjurer] exhorted him to sit down and compose himself till he should cast afigure; then he scrawled the paper, and waving his wand, repeated abundance of gibberishconcerning the number, the names, the houses, and revolutions of the planets, with theirconjunctions, oppositions, signs, circles, cycles, trines, and trigons. When he perceived that thisartifice had its proper effect in dis turbing the brain of Crabshaw, he proceeded ..." The astrologertells Crabshaw some things that Crabshaw had already told him, although Crabshaw seems to haveforgotten this. Crab shaw is "thunderstruck to find the conjurer acquainted with all thesecircumstances," and wants to know if he can ask a question or two about his fortune, "Theastrologer pointing to the little coffin, our squire understood the hint, and deposited anothershilling. The sage had recourse to his book, erected another scheme, performed once more his airyevolutions with the wand, and having recited another mystical preamble, expounded the book offate in these words: "You shall neither die by war nor water, by hunger or by thirst, nor be broughtto the grave by an old age of distemper; but, let me see -- ay, the stars will have it so -

4 6 3 Qu oted b y Don Al len Cameron in The Star- Crossed Renaissance, 1941, p . 136 .

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- you shall be -- exalted -- hah! -- ay, that is -- hanged, for horse-stealing." --"Oh, good my lordconjurer!" roared the squire, “I'd as lief give forty shillings as be hanged." --"Peace, sirrah!" criedthe other; "would you contradict or reverse the immutable decrees of fate? Hanging is yourdestiny, and hanged you shall be -- and comfort yourself with the rejection, that as you are not thefirst, so neither will you be the last to swing on Tyburn tree." This comfortable assurancecomposed the mind of Timothy, and in a great measure reconciled him to the prediction." 464

22. Jacques Halbronn gives some details about the decline of astrology in France. Theprimary goal of the work of Abbé Pluche, especially the Histoire du Ciel, 1739, was toundermine the foundations of astrology by reawakening the world of gods and heroes that hadbeen pushed aside. "The history of the birth of this supposed science," he wrote, "is its refutation,for all Astrology is no more than a false interpretation of certain signs that have beenmisunderstood." One of Pluche's major concerns was to distinguish sharply between astronomyand astrology, and Halbronn observes that "in this he was followed by all the historians of theRevolutionary period, from Bailly to La Lande and Delambre. Astronomers to some extent feltaffected by the disfavor attached to astrology, and since approximately the time of Pluche,astronomers have been prime opponents of astrology. Historians of astronomy committedthemselves to removing the stigmata of astrology by purifying their discourse of everything thatmight be a reminder of the link between the two activities. For a century and a half, roughly from1730 to 1880, astrology was considered by many only in the past tense. Astrology came to beconsidered as no longer dangerous, but merely empty.465

23. The effect on astrology of the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican view ofthe world has often been mis-evaluated. As many astrologers realized, Copernicanism andastrology are as consistent as Ptolemaicism and astrology, just as navigation by the stars asviewed from earth is consistent with navigation by the stars as viewed from the sun. Whateverinfluence the earth and sun have on one another doesn't depend which body is taken as a referencepoint. As far as positions of celestial objects are concerned, aside from the forces they exert onone another, it's just a matter of one's point of view. Given the general relativity of Einstein, thisis so even taking forces into account. It's comparatively simple to transform positions with respectto our earth into positions with respect to our sun, and vice versa. Relating forces in the two systemsis more difficult, but possible. Furthermore, while the effect of placing the sun rather than the earthat the center of the universe no doubt made some people feel less central (!), I suggest that adecline in belief in the power of magic, and in the power to predict personal and political mattersby means of interpreting the stars, contributed more than the advent of Copernicanism to feelingsthat the universe was not made especially for us. This was perceived as a loss of power, orpotential power, rather than of position.

24. A decline in belief in astrology was especially prevalent among well educated andscientifically oriented people. Formerly there were professors of astrology in universities, andastrologers were openly hired and consulted by temporal and spiritual leaders. For example, at theuniversities of Bologna, Padua and Milan in Italy, the list of professors of astrology is

464 Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, 1762, Hutchinson edition of 1905, boundwith Adventures of an Atom, p. 215-217.

465 Jacques Halbronn, "The Revealing Process of Translation and Criticism", in Astrology, Science andSociety, 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 213-215.

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continuous from the early 13th to the 16th century, and includes such names as Pietro d'Abano,Giorgio Peurbach and Regiomontanus.466 The latter two are often counted among the earliestmodern astronomers. The chair in judicial astrology at the University of Salamanca was occupieduntil at least 1770.467 Professors of mathematics and medicine were often astrologers, andnumerous officials of the State and Church up to kings and popes employed or favored astrology.Wedel speaks, for example, of Guido Bonatti, perhaps the most famous professional astrologer ofthe 13th century: "As an example of the kind of services he rendered his masters, Filippo Villanirelates that while in the employ of Guido de Montefeltro, he would mount the campanile [belltower] to observe the stars at the outbreak of any military expedition. At the first striking of thebell, the count and his men would put on their armor; at the second stroke, they would mount theirhorses; and at the third, spur their steeds to a gallop. Experience testifies,

says Villani, that by this means the count won many a victory."4 68 For a long time, astrology was achief tool of medical doctors. This is no longer so (I think). Yet many people still to some degreebelieve in the efficacy of astrology, such is the deep longing many people have for the kind ofpower astrology is alleged to furnish.

25. I have depicted some large patterns and small bits of astronomy/astrology, the studyof stars, as it was up to the transformation of science which began in the latter part of the 16thcentury. It was in this era that astronomy and astrology began to split apart to the extent we seetoday. Galileo was a prominent contributor to this separation. In his Dialogo sopra due massimisistemi del mondo, tolemaico, e copernicano of 1632, Galileo has Salviati (representing himself)say: "Likewise it is completely idle to say (as is attributed to one of the ancient mathematicians)that the tides are caused by the conflict between the motion of the earth and the motion of thelunar sphere, not only because it is neither obvious nor has it been explained how this mustfollow, but because its glaring falsity is revealed by the rotation of the earth being not contrary tothe motion of the moon, but in the same direction. Thus everything that has been previouslyconjectured by others seems to me completely invalid. But among all the great men who havephilosophized about this remarkable effect, I am more astonished at Kepler than at any other.Despite his open and acute mind, and though he has at his fingertips the motions attributed to theearth, he has nevertheless lent his ear and his assent to the moon's dominion over the waters, tooccult properties, and to such puerilities."469

26. From our point of view, as influenced by Newton's treatment of gravitationalattraction, Kepler seems to have had the right idea after all. The moon does have a physicaleffect on our lives, as star-gazers first maintained so long ago, inasmuch as its gravitationalattraction has an effect on our lives. This much of astronomy/astrology has been absorbed intoastronomy. Galileo wanted to do away with even this much.

27. On the other hand, Galileo has Sagredo (representing an educated layman) say toSimplicio (representing an Aristotelian philosopher): "I have a little book, much briefer thanAristotle or Ovid, in which is contained the whole of science, and with very little study one mayform from it the most complete ideas. It is the alphabet, and no doubt anyone who can properly

466 Theodore Otto Wedel in The Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology, Particularly in England, 1920, p. 77.

467 Thorndike, ibid., v. 6, p. 166.468 Wedel, ibid., p. 78-79.469 Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 1632, translated by Stillman Drake, 1962, p.

462.

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join and order this or that vowel and these or those consonants with one another can dig out of it thetruest answers to every question, and draw from it the instruction in all the arts and sciences. Just sodoes a painter, from the various simple colors placed separately upon his palette, by gathering alittle of this with a bit of that and a trifle of the other, depict men, plants, buildings, birds, fishes,and in a word represent every visible object, without any eyes or feathers or scales or leaves orstones being on his palette. Indeed, it is necessary that none of the things imitated nor parts ofthem should actually be among the colors, if you want to be able to represent everything; if therewere feathers, for instance, these would not do to depict anything but birds or feather dusters Thismanner of 'containing' everything that can be known is similar to the sense in which a block ofmarble contains a beautiful statue, or rather thousands of them; but the whole point lies in beingable to reveal them. Even better we might say that it is like the prophecies of Joachim or theanswers of the heathen oracles, which are understood only after the events they have forecast haveoccurred." Salviati interjects: "And why do you leave out the prophecies of the astrologers, whichare so clearly seen in horoscopes (or should we say in the configurations of the heavens) aftertheir fulfillment?"470 This much of astronomy/astrology, attributed by Galileo to an unsupporteduse of language, is not found in our astronomy today.

2 8 . Similarly, Thorndike relates of Descartes that in 1629: "... he wrote that he judgedfrom the title of Gaffarel's recent Curiositez inouyes sur la sculpture des Persans, horoscope despatriarches et lecture des estoilles [Forgotten curiosities about the sculpture of the Persians,horoscopes of the patriarchs and reading of the stars] that it would contain only chimeras. Thus healready drew a sharp line between natural or mathematical magic, which could be effected orexplained mechanically, and an immaterial magic based on the power of words, pictures anddiagrams. " 4 7 1

29. It has been stated at times that a crucial blow to the validity of associating influencesof celestial objects with human affairs was dealt when Isaac Newton and Edmond Halleydiscovered the regular orbits of comets. In this view, it was the unpredictability of comets thatmade them seem ominous, and when the unpredictability was removed, so was the ominousness.However, Simon Schaffer has argued that the work of Newton, Halley and some of theircontemporaries on comets was part of a natural philosophy which still dealt with propheticaspects of astronomical signs. In particular, Newton suggested that comets might be used by Godto replenish materials on Earth, or, more ominously, to terminate life on Earth by crashing into thesun and defeating the stability of the solar system. At the same time, it follows from Schaffer'swork that Newton attacked a basic tenet of astral religion, the divinity of celestial objects. Newtontook this doctrine to be a form of idolatry, and also as the basis of astrology. Thus the work ofNewton on comets, and work related to it, contained an attack on astrology. Schaffer's analysis ofNewton's cometography (as Schaffer calls it, perhaps after a work Cometographia of 1668 by SethWard which Schaffer cites, in which Ward asserted that comets move in circles) can be used notonly to reveal Newton's argument against astrology, but also to

470 Galileo, ibid., p. 109-110 of Drake’s translation.471 Lynn Thorndike, A History o f Magic and Experimenta l Sc ience,1923- 1958, v. 7 (1958), p. 557.

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show a part of what we now call astronomy emerging from the astronomy/astrology whichpreceded it. 4 7 2

30. It was a comet of 1664-1665 which aroused Newton's interest in comets, and perhapsin astronomy in general. In his work on comets (1619-1620), Kepler had distinguished betweenpermanent celestial objects which move in closed orbits, and transient ones, such as comets,which move (he thought) in straight lines. By 1680, Newton had convinced himself that thisclassification was correct. However, certain events transformed his view. Among these was aheightened concern among astrologers and their opponents over the significance of comets inconnection with a Catholic threat (the Popish Plot), and the fall of monarchies. This was of greatconcern to Newton. The comets of 1680-1681 and 1682 were to become prize specimens in a newcometography he developed. Robert Hooke had by this time argued that comets were more likeplanets than was generally thought at the time, and Edmond Halley had convinced himself thatlinear paths for comets could not explain observations. The astronomer Giovanni Cassini hadidentified the comet of 1680 with those of 1577 and 1665. Earlier, in 1677, the astronomer JohnFlamsteed had announced that comets "make their returns as in stated times & move about yefixed stars at a vast distance." He pronounced this to be a powerful argument against astrologicalpredictions based on appearances of comets, and even against judicial astrology in general. In1681, Flamsteed argued for a cometary path which took a sharp bend near the sun, and suggestedthat it might be attracted by the sun in its approach and repelled from it afterwards. Between thespring of 1681 and the autumn of 1684, Newton decided that comets should be treated in the samemanner as planets, and that both types of objects moved in elliptical orbits around the sun. Hedeveloped a method for calculating the parameters of the orbits of comets and their periods whichappeared in Book 3 of the Principia in 1687. By the winter of 1695-1696, Halley and Newton hadestablished at least two closed and periodic cometary paths, and on 3 June 1696 Halley told theRoyal Society that the comet of 1682 and that of 1607 were the same, and that it had a period ofabout 75 years. This became known as Halley's comet.473

31. According to Schaffer, this work of Newton and Halley on comets in the 1690's wasintimately linked to their re-definition of the function of comets in the universe. There were anumber of projects connected with these functions. These included an analysis of the stability of thesolar system, the scriptural history of the Earth including the Biblical deluge and end of the world,an analysis of changes in mass of the planets and sun, and of the maintenance of vital activitythroughout the cosmos. Newton held that comets were part of a divinely planned system. Forexample, in a letter to Richard Bentley, he says: "To your second Query I answer that ye motionswch ye Planets now have could not spring from any naturall cause alone but were imprest by anintelligent Agent. For since Comets descend into ye region of our Planets & here move all mannerof ways going sometimes the same way wth the Planets sometimes the contrary way & sometimesin cross ways in planes inclined to ye plane of the Ecliptick at all kinds of angles: its plaine thatthere is no naturall cause wch could determin all ye Planets both primary and seconday to moveye same way & in ye same plane wthout any considerable

472 Simon Schaffer, "Newton's Comets and the Transformation of Astrology", in Astrology , Science andSociety , 1987, edited by Patrick Curry, p. 2 19-243.473 Schaffer, ibid.

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variation. This must have been the effect of Counsel."474 And he is quoted by Gregory as saying:"that a continual miracle is needed to prevent the Sun and fixed stars from rushing togetherthrough gravity: that the great eccentricity in Comets in directions both different from andcontrary to the planets indicates a divine hand: and implies that the Comets are destined for a useother than that of the planets."475

32. In 1687, Newton argued as follows in Book III of the Principia: "And it is notunlikely but that the vapor [from the tails of comets], thus continually rarefied and dilated, may beat last dissipated and scattered through the whole heavens, and by little and little be attractedtowards the planets by its gravity, and mixed with their atmosphere; for as the seas are absolutelynecessary to the constitution of our earth, that from them, the sun, by its heat, may exhale asufficient quantity of vapors, which, being gathered together into clouds, may drop down in rain, forwatering of the earth, and for the production and nourishment of vegetables; or being condensedwith cold on the tops of mountains (as some philosophers with reason judge), may run down insprings and rivers; so for the conservation of the seas, and fluids of the planets, comets seem to berequired, that, from their exhalations and vapors condensed, the wastes of the planetary fluidsspent upon vegetation and putrefaction, and converted into dry earth, may be continually suppliedand made up; for all vegetables entirely derive their growths from fluids, and afterwards, in greatmeasure, are turned into dry earth by putrefaction; and a sort of slime is always found to settle atthe bottom of putrefied fluids; and hence it is that the bulk of the solid earth is continuallyincreased; and the fluids, if they are not supplied from without, must be in continual decrease, andquite fail at last. I suspect, moreover, that it is chiefly from the comets that spirit comes, which isindeed the smallest but most subtle and useful part of our air, and so much required to sustain thelife of all things with us."476

33. In the early 1670's, Newton had written in a manuscript called "Of natures obviouslaws & processes in vegetation" that "this Earth resembles a great animall or rather inanimatevegetable, draws in aethereall breath for its dayly refreshment & vitall ferment & transpires againthe grosse exhalations".477 These ideas were made a part of his cometography after 1687, andamplified in the final queries in his Optics of 1706. Thus comets served a divine office --therestoration of vegetative life.

34. Newton seems not to have been much attached to the idea that celestial objects arealive. The Earth, he says, resembles a large animal, or rather an "inanimate vegetable" (whateverthat might be). Robert Westfall calls attention to an alchemical paper of Newton's which probesthe distinction between vegetation and mechanical changes. Newton sometimes referred to aprinciple of vegetable action as a spirit, or "Powerfull agent". Sometimes he referred to it with aplural such as seeds or seminal virtues, which are nature's "only agents, her fire, her soule, herlife." Westfall concludes: "That is, what he found in the world of alchemy was the conviction thatnature cannot be reduced to the arrangement of inert particles of matter. Nature contains

474 Letter from Newton to Bentley, 10 Dec 1692, in The Correspondence of Newton, edited by H. W. Turnbull,J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall and L. Tilling, 1959-1977, v. 3 (1961), p. 234.475 Gregory, memoranda of 5,6,7 May 1694, ibid., p. 336.476 Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalisprincipia mathematica (1687), translated by Andrew Motte (1729),revised by Florian Cajori (1934) with the title Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of theWorld, p. 529-530.477 Quoted by Schaffer, ibid., p. 235.

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foci of activity, agents whose spontaneous working produces results that cannot be accounted for bythe mechanical philosophy's only category of explanation: particles of matter in motion." 478

35. Westfall makes a case for concluding that Newton's alchemical studies stimulatedNewton to introduce his concept of forces of attraction and repulsion acting between particles ofmatter. But the concept of a life force animating matter is quite different from the concept of aliving planet with a soul. I have not been able to find any indication that Newton consideredplanets to have souls, or to be alive as an animal or person is alive, in the way Kepler did.

36. By 1698, Newton had concluded that the comet of 1680 was periodic, and in the 2ndand 3rd editions of the Principia (1713, 1726) said: "The comet which appeared in the year 1680was in its perihelion less distant from the sun than by a sixth part of the sun's diameter; and becauseof its extreme velocity in that proximity to the sun, and some density of the sun's atmosphere, itmust have suffered some resistance and retardation; and therefore, being attracted somewhat nearerto the sun in every revolution, will at last fall down upon the body of the sun. Nay, in itsaphelion, where it moves the slowest, it may sometimes happen to be yet further retarded by theattractions of other comets, and in consequence of this retardation descend to the sun. So fixedstars, that have been gradually wasted by the light and vapors emitted from them for a long time,may be recruited by comets that fall upon them; and from this fresh supply of new fuel those oldstars, acquiring new splendor, may pass for new stars. Of this kind are such fixed stars as appearon a sudden, and shine with a wonderfull brightness at first, and afterwards vanish little bylittle."479 Thus Newton conjectures that a nova may be the result of an old star being struck by oneof its comets. Furthermore, he predicts that the comet of 1680, belonging to our own solar system,may fall into our sun.

37. Newton never made public the fact that his own work involved correlation betweendivine functions of comets and ancient prophecy. However, he drafted arguments in his System ofthe World in 1685 that a true system of the world had been known in ancient times, and latercorrupted. A version of this appeared in English in 1728: "It was the ancient opinion of not a few,in the earliest ages of philosophy, that the fixed stars stood immovable in the highest parts of theworld; that under the fixed stars the planets were carried about the sun; that the earth, as one ofthe planets, described an annual course about the sun, while by a diurnal motion it was in themeantime revolved about its own axis; and that the sun, as the common fire which served to warmthe whole, was fixed in the centre of the universe. This was the philosophy taught of old byPhilolaus, Aristarchus of Samos, Plato in his riper years, and the whole sect of the Pythagoreans;and this was the judgment of Anaximander, more ancient still; and of that wise king of theRomans, Numa Pompilius, who, as a symbol of the figure of the world with the sun in the centre,erected a round temple in honor of Vesta, and ordained perpetual fire to be kept in the middle of it."

38. "The Egyptians were early observers of the heavens; and from them, probably, thisphilosophy was spread abroad among other nations; for from them it was, and the nations aboutthem, that the Greeks, a people more addicted to the study of philology than of Nature, derived

478 Robert S. Westfall, ”Newton and Alchemy” in Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance, 1984,edited by Brian Vickers, p. 315 -335.479 Newton, Principia, translation of Motte and Cajori, p. 540-541.

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their first, as well as soundest, notions of philosophy; and in the Vestal ceremonies we may yettrace the ancient spirit of the Egyptians; for it was their way to deliver their mysteries, that is,their philosophy of things above the common way of thinking, under the veil of religious rites andhieroglyphic symbols. It is not to be denied that Anaxagoras, Democritus, and others, did now andthen start up, who would have it that the earth possessed the centre of the world, and that the starswere revolved towards the west about the earth quiescent in the centre, some at a swifter, others ata slower rate. However, it was agreed on both sides that the motions of the celestial bodies wereperformed in spaces altogether free and void of resistance. The whim of solid orbs was of a laterdate, introduced by Eudoxus, Calippus, and Aristotle, when the ancient philosophy began todecline, and to give place to the new prevailing fictions of the Greeks. But, above all things, thephenomena of comets can by no means tolerate the idea of solid orbits. The Chaldeans, the mostlearned astronomers of their time, looked upon the comets (which of ancient times before had beennumbered among the celestial bodies) as a particular sort of planets, which, describing eccentricorbits, presented themselves to view only by turns, once in a revolution, when they descended intothe lower parts of their orbits. And as it was the unavoidable consequence of the hypothesis ofsolid orbits, while it prevailed, that the comets should be thrust into spaces below the moon; so,when later observations of astronomers restored the comets to their ancient places in the higherheavens, these celestial spaces were necessarily cleared of the incumbrance of solid orbits."480

39. In the years in which Newton was forming his theory of comets, he was alsocomposing a fundamental study of ancient theology and natural philosophy, the Philosophicalorigins of gentile theology (begun 1683-1684; reworked 1694 and after).481 Here he linked idolatryand false cometography. False cometography, he said, suffered from the worship of planetarysouls as real divinities identified with temporal kings and heroes. In the mid 1680's, Newtonargued that the natural philosophers of the ancients had been their priests. The Chaldeans inBabylon were an example. In the Philosophical origins, he explained that when "the stars weredeclared to move in their courses in the heavens by the force of their souls and seemed to all mento be heavenly deities", then "gentile Astrology and Theology were introduced by cunning Priests topromote the study of stars and the growth of the priesthood and at length spread through theworld." Newton singled out Cabbalists, Gnostics and neo-Platonists as sharing a common idolatryand a common error which concealed the true system of the world. Thus around 1685, Newton hadcomposed a treatise on ancient philosophy in which he charged that false worship of elements ofwhat had been proper natural philosophy had destroyed a correct theory of comets, already knownto certain ancient astronomers, and which he was undertaking to restore.

40. In Schaffer's view, Newton's interpretation of his work on comets affectedastrology in two ways. First, it promoted the idea that the interpretation of comets should passfrom popular divination to a theologically oriented natural philosophy: theologically oriented,since Newton regarded the activity of comets to be divinely directed, and believed that they couldbe used by God as His agents. This still gave comets a dramatic function and propheticmeaning. They could, for example, rejuvenate Earth and the planets, and they could terminatelife on

480 Probably translated by Andrew Motte, appended to the Motte and Cajori translation of the Principia, p. 549-550.481 Quoted by Schaffer, ibid,, p. 242; "gentile" is used here with the obsolete meaning of "heathen" or "pagan".

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Earth. Second, Newton challenged the idolatry which attributed the wrong kind of spiritualpower to the heavens. That is, he attacked the idea that planets are divine. 482

41. Here we come to a crux. Mathematical celestial mechanics, of the sort largely foundedby Newton, can be used to predict the motions of comets --they move pretty nearly in predictableellipses (at least, most all of them do -- a few might move in hyperbolas or parabolas).Furthermore, mathematics of the kind introduced by Newton, and extended by many others by wayof nonlinear dynamics, can be used to predict breakdowns of the stability of the solar system. ThusNewton's methods can be used to predict such things as the end of the world (quite aside from theSecond Law of Thermodynamics, which is another story). Therefore one might be entitled to callNewton's celestial mechanics a kind of reformed astrology. It achieves one of the aims ofastrology by methods quite different from traditional astrology – Kepler’s announced program.Newton himself believed that with his methods he was restoring the system of the ancientBabylonian astronomers, which had been corrupted by priests and astrologers. "Astrologers,augurs, auruspicers &c are," he said, "such as pretend to ye art of divining ... without being able todo what they pretend to ... and to believe than man or woman can really divine ... is of the samenature with believing that the Idols of the Gentiles were not vanities but had spirits really seatedin them." 483

42. Newton supplied us with techniques for divining, for predicting what God intends (ifone believes in this manner, as it appears Newton did), with which suitably equiped people can dowhat they pretend to be able to do in the way of certain kinds of predictions, or very nearly, incertain circumstances. And it has often been claimed that Newton's theory of gravity grew out of atheory of planetary influences, although Newton himself showed a noticeable reluctance to say so,protesting that his quantitative results were correct no matter what you attributed them to. Heshowed great reluctance to stand behind a mechanism for gravity, although at times he spoke ofGod as an agency for maintaining celestial objects in their courses.

43. Eugenio Garin observes: "The stages of so-called 'scientific progress' are anything butstraightforward and unambiguous. In the middle of the eighteenth century, G. M. Bose, Professorof Philosophy and Dean of the University of Wittenburg, wrote, with regard to Newton and theTheory of Universal Attraction: ... 'Shall action at a distance be granted? Will you then prevent astar from acting [on] a Talisman at a distance? Rejoice Melanchthon, the horoscope returns, Haly,Almutec, Athacir, Alcecadenor, Hylec. Shall action at a distance be granted? Soon the Thessalianwitch, horrid with wrinkles and bristles, raging, shall return." 484

44. In Newton's Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St.John, one of his last works, published in 1733, a few years after his death, Newton says: "Forunderstanding the Prophecies, we are, in the first place, to acquaint ourselves with the figurativelanguage of the Prophets. This language is taken from the analogy between the world natural, andan empire or kingdom considered as a world polit ic. Accordingly, the whole world naturalconsisting of heaven and earth, signifies the whole world politic, consisting of thrones andpeople, or so much of it as is considered in the Prophecy: and the things in that world signify the

482 Schaffer, ibid., p. 241-242.

483 Quoted by Shaffer.484Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance, 1983), translation of La Zodiaco della Vita, 1976), p. 5-6.

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analogous things in this. For the heavens, and the things therein, signify thrones and dignities,and those who enjoy them; and the earth, with things thereon, the inferior people; and the lowestparts of the earth, called Hades or Hell, the lowest or most miserable part of them ....."

45. "In the heavens, the Sun and Moon are, by interpreters of dreams, put for the personsof Kings and Queens; but in sacred Prophecy, which regards not single persons, the Sun is put forthe whole species and race of Kings, in the kingdom or kingdoms of the world politic, shiningwith regal power and glory; the Moon for the body of the common people, considered as the King'swife; the Stars for subordinate Princes and great men, or for Bishops and Rulers of the people ofGod, when the sun is Christ; light for the glory, truth, and knowledge, wherewith great and goodmen shine and illuminate others; darkness for obscurity of condition, and for error, blindness andignorance; darkning, smiting, or setting of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, for the ceasing of akingdom, or for the desolation thereof, proportional to the darkness; darkning the Sun, turningthe Moon into blood, and falling of the Stars, for the same; new Moons, for the return of adispersed people into a body politic or ecclesiastic."485 After this, Newton gives interpretations offire in various forms, various movements of clouds, winds, thunder, lighting, water in variousforms, geological formations, animals, vegetables and plants, and so on.

46. This passage, in which Newton describes how he reads Biblical prophecies, puts lighton his reference (cited above) to Chaldeans as "the most learned astronomers of their time", and hiscomplaint (also cited above) that certain ancient Greeks and priests had corrupted previouslyknown correct astronomy by declaring that the stars "move in their courses in the heavens by theforce of their souls" and were deemed to be "heavenly deities", and that "gentile Astrology andTheology were introduced by cunning Priests to promote the study of stars and the growth of thepriesthood and at length spread through the world." Newton speaks of the correspondencesbetween natural objects and processes, on the one hand, and political entities and activities, onthe other, as being a matter of figurative language, based on analogy between the two worlds. Yethe believes in the accuracy and indeed inevitability of the predictions made by the Biblicalprophets. He says: "And the giving ear to the Prophets is a fundamental character of the trueChurch The authority of the Prophets is divine, and comprehends the sum of religion... Theirwritings contain the covenant between God and his people, with instructions for keeping thiscovenant And no power on earth is authorized to alter this covenant." Of Daniel in particular,he says: "The predictions of things to come relate to the state of the Church in all ages; andamongst the old Prophets, Daniel is most distinct in order of time, and easiest to be understood:and therefore in those things which relate to the last times, he must be made the key to the rest."486

47. Thus according to Newton's description, Biblical prophecy can give results of the kindthe Chaldeans expected from their omen astrology and other methods of prediction they used,before the invention of personal astrology with its horoscopes and houses. In Newton's view, asstated in the first part of the Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse ofSt. John, Biblical prophecy furnishes "in figurative language" strictly determined predictions ofpolitical matters based on the interpretation of natural processes involving celestial and terrestrialnatural objects. To be sure, he doesn't admit the divinity of such objects. The

485 Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733), p. 16-23.486 ibid., p. 14-15.

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accuracy of the predictions is presumably guaranteed by the one God alone, who uses the naturalobjects "figuratively" (whatever that might mean) in order to communicate this foreknowledge.Newton's views on this question therefore resemble those of Calvin, but differ distinctly fromthose of Thomas Aquinas (to take just two examples). A widespread judgment today (asdiscussed earlier) is that the Chaldeans did attribute divinity to celestial objects. Newton seems toimply (although I don't know of a place where he says so outright) that the Chaldeans did not doso, and that such beliefs were introduced later by certain Greeks, to the detriment of trueastronomy. Of course, Newton knew nothing of the many Babylonian writings which have beenrecovered after his time.

48. Pierre Duhem remarked that modern science was born on the day someone proclaimedthe truth that the same mechanics and the same physical laws rule celestial and sublunarymotions, the sun, the flow and ebb of the tides, the fall of bodies. This pertains to the universalityI spoke of earlier. For such a thought to become possible, Duhem says, it was necessary that thestars fall from the divine rank in which antiquity had placed them, and for this it was necessary fora theological revolution to occur. This revolution, Duhem believed, was the the work of Christiantheologians.487 The path to Duhem's conclusion is not clear, since denial of the divinity of celestialobjects occurred in pre-Christian antiquity, and seems then and later to have had several sources.For example, we noted that Deuteronomy 4.19 forbids the worship of celestial objects, so itappears Jews began or continued the theological revolution (if it can be called this) before Christappeared. Again, with Galileo and after, telescopes revealed irregular features of our moon, sunand some planets, some of which had counterparts on earth (mountains on the moon), and this madeit difficult to believe any longer in the perfection and distinctiveness usually required of divineobjects. But it would be characteristic of Newton to include a theological motive among thereasons for which he rejected the divinity of celestial objects.

49. Later in the Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, Newton deals with theApocalypse of St. John, the book of Revelations of the Christian New Testament. Here it is said onthe basis of Daniel 10.21 and 12.4,9 that Daniel sealed the book of Revelations "until the time of theend". Newton takes this to mean that "these prophecies of Daniel and John should not beunderstood till the time of the end: but then some should prophesy out of them in an afflicted andmournful state for a long time, and that but darkly, so as to convert but few. But in the very end, theProphecy should be so far interpreted as to convince many But if the last age, the age ofopening these things, be now approaching, as by the great successes of late Interpreters it seemsto be, we have more encouragement than ever to look into these things. If the general preaching ofthe Gospel is approaching, it is to us and our posterity that those words mainly belong: In the timeof the end the wise shall understand. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words ofthis Prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein." (Newton's italics.)

50. Newton continues: "The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretel times and things bythis Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not onlyexposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was quiteotherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men's curiosities byenabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted bythe event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the

487Pier re Duh em, Le Système du Monde, 1913, v. 2 , p . 453 .

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world. For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argumentthat the world is governed by providence ....... The event [of Christ's second coming] will prove theApocalypse; and this Prophecy, thus proved and understood, will open the old Prophets, and alltogether will make known the true religion, and establish it. For he that will understand the oldProphets, must begin with this; but the time is not yet come for understanding them perfectly,because the main revolution in them is not yet come to pass ..... "

51. "There is already so much of the Prophecy fulfilled, that as many as will take pains inthis study, may see sufficient instances of God's providence: but then the signal revolutionspredicted by all the holy Prophets, will at once both turn mens eyes upon considering thepredictions, and plainly interpret them. Till then we must content ourselves with interpretingwhat hath been already fulfilled. Amongst the Interpreters of the last age there is scarce one ofnote who hath not made some discovery worth knowing; and thence I seem to gather that God isabout opening these mysteries. The success of others put me upon considering it; and if I havedone any thing which may be useful to following writers, I have my design."488

52. Newton said in the passage I quoted earlier that the book of Daniel must be made thekey to all the other prophecies about the end of time, which express what God will bring to pass,and from all he says in the first few pages of this work, we might expect that Biblical prophecywill enable to predict when the world will end. But this later passage is a kind of admission ofdefeat. We cannot securely extract prophecies from the Scriptures, he is saying -- we can onlyunderstand fully what the words mean retrospectively, and then see that the prophecies have beenfulfilled.

53. So Newton's method for reading Biblical prophecy appears from his description, Isuggest, as a kind of "purified" omen astrology, of the general sort Kepler envisioned, along withsome purified divination of other kinds. Of course, Kepler influenced Newton in numerous otherways, amd in any case, as we have seen, astrology and astral worship in various forms were stillintertwined with astronomy in the Europe of Newton’s time. We can say, I suggest, that in thePrincipia, with his celestial mechanics, Newton presented what can be, and may well have beentaken in his time, to be a kind of purified astrology -- a mathematically based system with whichone can in many cases predict with great accuracy the motions of natural objects when one knowsmathematical expressions for the forces -- or influences -- acting on them. This can be describedas a kind of natural astrology, a term which was used in Newton's time, cf. Natural Magic. Thereis a common objective underlying both of these works: to be able to predict the course of things.In interpreting Biblical prophecy for this purpose, Newton found the canonical scriptures tooobscure, an obscurity which he attributed to God's design. In applying his laws of motion andgravitation, and their mathematical development, for this purpose, he may have taken himself tohave had greater success in developing this objective.

54. In the preface to his biography of Newton, Robert Westfall observes: "It has been myprivilege at various times to know a number of brilliant men, men whom I acknowledge withouthesitation to be my intellectual superiors. I have never, however, met one against whom I wasunwillng to measure myself, so that it seemed reasonable to say that I was half as able as theperson in question, or a third or a fourth, but in every case a finite fraction. The end result of my

4 8 8 Isaac Newton, Ob serva t ions upon the Prophecies o f Danie l , p. 249-253.

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study of Newton [over a period of some 20 years] has served to convince me that with him there isno measure. He has become for me wholly other, one of the tiny handful of supreme geniuses whohave shaped the categories of the human intellect, a man not finally reducible to the criteria bywhich we comprehend our fellow beings... "4 8 9

55. It may be that Westfall is right about the nature of Newton's genius, but I suggest thatfeelings of Newton's "otherness" may be alleviated to some extent by admitting Newton'sattachment to, or obsession with, knowing the course of things as broadly as possible, togetherwith the fact that he was a firm believer in the truth of Biblical prophecy, and was in some degreededicated to the aims of omen or natural astrology, although not to the methods. This means thata certain distortion of Newton may be introduced by making too central in one’s interpretation ofNewton’s life and works that part of Newton's work most people would nowadays characterize as“scientific”, and separating this from his interests in what we now call alchemy, to be distinguishedfrom “genuine” chemistry, and astrology, to be distinguished from “genuine” astronomy. Forexample, Westfall says (on the next page of his preface): "Newton holds our attention onlybecause he is a scientist of transcendant importance. Hence I tend to think of my work as ascientific biography, that is, a biography in which Newton's scientific career furnishes the centraltheme." (Westfall, ibid., p. x.)

56. We should allow for what Newton took to be scientific methods and subject matter, orrather what he took to be methods and subject matter of natural philosophy, since the term“scientific” was not used in his day in the ways we use it today (in English). He appears, forexample, to have believed that determining the chronology of the world, and interpreting Biblicalprophecy to predict the end of the world, were enterprises which could be undertakenscientifically. Newton wanted to find out about the course of things any way he could – usingmathematics, alchemy, scriptures, whatever offered some prospect of working. This aim underliesboth his scientific (in our sense) and religious works. Given a tolerant enough view of theintellectual, religious and political environment of his time, his interests and methods seem quiteunderstandable. His speed, depth and scope of penetration are awesome -- but alien? I think theyneed not be.

57. I have dwelt more on the astrology than the astronomy in astronomy/astrology to set thestage for an appreciation of how astronomy, as we now understand it, grew from a complexmixture of astrolatry, astrology and astronomy. It seems likely to me that the positions of theplanets and sun and moon at our births are of little or no significance in determining ourcharacters and careers (unless Gauquelin and many present-day astrologers are right; see Preface).But there are subtler senses in which the stars can affect the way we are and act. For example, it isa familiar contention that our values and ideals aren't found, or shouldn't be found, in nature, intime and space. "Is" doesn't imply "ought", the slogan goes. But how have our values, desires,hopes and ideals evolved as we have interacted with the rest of the natural world -- in particular,with the heavens? To what degree have we been led by the stars, which are, according to mostcurrent physical cosmologies, our ultimate ancestors?

58. Gerald Hawkins comments: "Perhaps we shall never know the true significance of thesky in the lives of ancient peoples. Did a gossamer idea spread outward, transferred by contact

4 8 9 Robert West fa l l , Never At Rest , A Biography of I saac Newton , 1980, p. ix.

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between cultures, and was this idea the critical step toward civilization, the emergence of man asthat species with transcendental consciousness? Or was the awareness a natural response ofdifferent races, different cultures, to the unifying stimulus of the sky? We find evidence for thisinfluence from before the time of writing, from deep prehistory, on the continents of Asia,Africa, the Americas, and on the Pacific Islands."490

59. E.C. Krupp suggests that what takes place in the sky assists our brains in organizing itsperceptions of the world. The idea that order is a fundamental aspect of the universe may be takento be an assumption, having its ultimate origin in the interactions of humans with the skies and theircontents. Without the sky, our brains might have sought symmetry and order and cyclicalphenomena elsewhere -- crystals or flowers, perhaps. But the sky is an obvious repository oforder. Its effects on our brains is shown by the antiquity of astronomy and the presence of celestialimagery everywhere in ancient times. "What we see in the lights overhead," Krupp says, "is theitinerary of cosmic order ... It defines what is sacred and makes the sky the domain of thegods."491

60. "If we are seeking immortality," Krupp says, "the sky is a good place to start. We seeendless repetition there. Although we know that we ourselves will die, we see the sun, moon andstars survive night after night, month after month, year after year. They may disappear, but theirabsences are only temporary We see a fundamental pattern in the celestial realm and frame fromit what seems to be the cycle of cosmic order and the way of the world: creation-growthdeath-rebirth. We seek our own past, present, and future in that cycle." Of course we also see the cycleof birth-growth-death-rebirth in vegetation, but this is seen to follow movements in the sky, whichare more certain and superior. Contemplation and worship of celestial beings and their actions arean antidote to chaos."

61. "Celestial order," says Krupp, "generally was transfused into human society in ancienttimes through the sovereignty of the ruler. The mandate of heaven sanctified kingship. Byinvoking the sky, kings and their institutions gained special authority and meaning." The sky "isthe door of perception to cosmic order." However, its cycles are not simple. This leads tocomplicated calendars. Dealing with this complexity was a duty of central authorities. Ultimateresponsibility for the calendar might belong to the pharaoh, the king, the emperor. His power wasthus enhanced because he was in league with the sky. Celebrations of celestial renewal allowedancient peoples to participate in the rhythm of cosmic order, and also to promote terrestrialrenewal and stability. Usually, a king acquired his authority through the mandate of heaven, thesource of order. But the king and his people also had to re-energize the sky. Their temples weremade sacred as metaphors of cosmic order. Entire cities and ritual centers were astronomicallyaligned and organized. Krupp says: "Beijing is the only world capital still laid out according to asacred cosmological plan... the cosmological motive behind the city's layout is known andpreserved. Even today, the monuments of the secular government of the People's Republic ofChina adhere to the ancient sacred plan. The flagpole in Tian an men Square, the Monument tothe People's Heroes, and Mao Ze Dong's Mausoleum all occupy stations on the

490 Gerald Hawkins, Beyond Stonehenge, 1973, p. 282-283.491 E. C. Krupp, Echoes of the Ancient Skies, The Astronomy ofLost Civilizations, 1983.

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city's main axis, between the Tian an men and the Qian men, two great gates of old ImperialBeijing."492

62. From the 1st century C.E.:

...... stetit unus in arcemerectus cap itis victorque ad sidera mittitsidereos oculos propiusque aspectat Olympuminquiritque Iovem; nec solafronte deorumcontentus manet, et caelum scrutator in alvocognatumque sequens corpus se quaerit in astris.

...... perspice vires,quas ratio, non pondus, habet: ratio omnia vincit.

Only man stands on a hill with his head raised up, sending hisstarry eyes in triumph to the stars, looking more closely at theheavens, and searchingfor God. He isn't content with the outwardGod, but examines heaven's womb. Following bodies akin to hisown, he looks for himself in the stars ..... consider the powerwhich reason has and gravity doesn't: reason conquers everything. 4 9 3

63. From the late 20th century A.D.: "All of chemistry, beyond hydrogen and helium, andtherefore, all of life has been formed by stellar evolution. In other words, with the exception ofhydrogen, everything in our bodies and brains has been produced in the thermonuclear reactionswithin stars which later exploded in galactic space."494

4 9 2 Krupp, ibid., p. 15, 22, 63, 74 -75, 96, 141, 183, 196,259, 315.

4 9 3 Manilius, Astronomica, a treatise on astrology and simple astronomy written about 10 C.E., text edited by G. P.Goold, 1972, my translation.4 9 4 Benjamin Gal-Or, Cosmology, Physics, and Philosophy, 1981, p. 352.

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Appendix to Chapter 7: Pierre d'Ailly, and Newton Again

1. Some 1400 years later than Origen, another Christian of rank, wrestled withastrology in much the same way as Origen (see Chapter 8). This was Pierre d'Ailly, who livedfrom 1350 or 1351 to 1420. D'Ailly rose to be a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Churchduring the time of the Schism, and the period in which there were two (at one point three)Popes, at Rome and Avignon, 1378 through 1414. D'Ailly's devotion to astrology has beeninvestigated by Laura Ackerman Smoller in her work, History, Prophecy and the Stars (1994).In her introduction, Smoller observes that people who have studied the roles of astrology andastronomy in medieval times have been concerned mostly with the prevailing attitudes ofpeople toward such practices and beliefs, and mostly the attitudes of theologians, rather thanwith practice of astrology. "While their studies nicely illuminate the Catholic church'sresponse to astrology, they say little about the opinions of persons who actually consulted thestars." (p. 5) Smoller observes that d'Ailly's conversion to astrology late in life, and hisextensive writings on the subject, offers an opportunity to study why and also how a personmight become involved with astrology, and how one might go about such an involvement."From d'Ailly's example, then," she says, "astrology emerges as an integral part of the rationalview of the world in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The belief that the heavenlybodies had some fort of influence on the earth below was just as pervasive as the notion thatGod had a plan for the world's destiny. ... D'Ailly saw astrology not as a magical art by whichhe could manipulate the future course of the world but rather as a rational science by whichhe could discern the broad patterns of earthly events. The great numbers of people who usedastrology in medicine, or making their business decisions, and for political advice must havebelievved , also, that they were turning to science for knowledge." (p. 7) In passing, I noteSmoller's comments on the nature of d'Ailly's writing: ""Many of his works were little morethan collages, composed of bits and pieces of other writers' prose. Through all hisborrowings, however, d'Ailly generally managed to convey his own opinion, which wassometimes quite different from that of his source. ... On the whole, d'Ailly was a compiler anddigester of others' thought. His later readership suggests that there was a vast need for thistype of writing." (p. 10) The present work may be said to have been compiled in the samespirit, although I am not sanguine enough to believe that there is, or will be, a vast need forthe present work. I do believe, though, that while enduring originality is precious, commentaryalso serves purposes of value.

2. In his later life, Pierre d'Ailly was much concerned with defendingastrology/astronomy from charges that it was inconsistent with Christianity. As a basis, hetook the attitude endorsed long before by Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) that one candistinguish between natural astrology and superstitious astrology, and that it is the formerwhich is consistent with Christianity, while the latter is not. Smoller reports that d'Ailly in hisVigintiloquium or Concordantia astronomie cum theologia (Concordance of astrology withtheology; 1414) listed these components of superstitious or false astrology: "1. The beliefthat all future events precede by fatal necessity from the stars; 2. The mingling ofsuperstitious magic arts with astrology; 3. The placing of free will and matters solely underdivine or supernatural control within astrology's power." (p. 37) Smoller notes that 2. isapparently directed against the practice of engraving stones with astrological images. Wehave seen that 1. and 3. were also rejected by Origen, and indeed this had been the central

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objection of Augustine to astrology. On the other hand, we have also seen that at least up tothe Hellenistic era, the Babylonian astrologers did not take astrological omens to beirreversibly deterministic. One of the functions of priests was to counteract unfavorableomens by means of suitable rituals. In his attempts to reconcile free will and God'somnipotence with astrological influences, d'Ailly wrote a number of treatises. To take anexample, in one late treatise, the Concordantia astronomie cum hystorica narratione(Concordance of astrology with historical narration; 1414), he asserted "God arranged 'towork naturally with causes, except where a miraculous operation intervenes.' thusastrological causality would apply to all earthly events save miracles." (Smoller, p. 38) Inanother treatise of 1414, the Apologetica defensio astronomice veritatis (Apologetic defenseof astrological truth; contained in his Tractatus de imagine mundi), d'Ailly speculates on therole of the astral influences on the Virgin Mary as to the development of Christ in utero.Smoller says: "D'Ailly began with the cautious observation that the Christian faith did notcompel one to exclude any stellar influence in Mary's birth, 'just as it does not compel one tosay that the sun did not warm her.' ... By reserving for God a supernatural causality beyondthat of the stars, d'Ailly placed astrology among the undeniable laws of nature and gave it ascope reaching as far as the human aspects of Christ." (p. 38)

3. In Chapter 4 of her book, Smoller has an analysis of how Pierre d'Ailly used astrologyto aid in establishing a chronology consistent with and explanatory of that in the Bible. Animportant principle he used for trying to establish the date of the Creation of the world, thestarting point of Biblical chronology, as well as for subsequent events he took to be ofimportance, was the fixing of the times of conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter. These aredescribed by Smoller as follows (p. 16, 20-23) "The seven planets all traveled along the pathof the zodiac, and the twelve signs which made up that band were deemed to have their owncharacteristics. In one division of the zodiac, astrologers distributed the signs among fourtriplicities (triplicitates, also sometimes translated as trigons). The signs of each triplicity allshared the characteristics of one of the four elements (fire, earth, air, and water). The signswere assigned successively to one of the four triplicities, so that a planet in its path throughthe zodiac would pass first through a fiery sign, then through an earthy sign, then through anairy sign, and finally through a watery sign. There were three such series in any trip aroundthe zodiac. The fiery triplicity consisted of the signs Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius. It was underthe rule of the sun by day and Jupiter by night. The earthly triplicity contained Taurus, Virgo, andCapricorn, under the rulership of Venus and the moon. Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius made upthe airy triplicity, under Saturn and Mercury. Finally, the watery triplicity comprised Cancer,Scorpio, and Pisces, with Mars ruling both day and night. [Thus the progressioncounterclockwise through the zodiac, taking into account the alternation of the kinds ofelements, can be represented on the circumference of a circle as Aries, Taurus, Gemini,Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Pisces, and back to Aries again.] ...As did his astrological sources, d'Ailly gave the greatest consideration to those conjunctionsof the two superior [outermost] planets, Saturn and Jupiter. Their exalted positions and slowmotions meant that their conjunctions were of more universal and enduring significance thanthose of the other planets. Astrologers classified these conjunctions according to the signsand triplicities in which they occurred. Saturn completes its course through the zodiac inroughly 30 years, and Jupiter takes around twelve years tomake the same circuit. Hence, the time between any two conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter will

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be approximately twenty years, during which time Saturn will have traveled a little more thantwo-thirds of the way through the zodiac. Thus, in the astrologers' customary example, if thefirst conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter occurs in Aries, the second will be in Sagittarius, thethird in Leo, and the fourth in Aries again. But, because the two planets do not complete theircourse through the zodiac in exactly thirty or twelve years, they do not return to the sameprecise point in Aries for their fourth conjunction. Rather, they are joined some 2 º25' from thepoint of the initial conjunction, to take Albumasar's figyre. Hence a series of conjunctions ofSaturn and Jupiter will show a gradual progression like that in figure 3. Eventually, aconjunction will happen in Taurus,, the neighboring sign to Aries. Then the succession willbegin again in another set of three signs. [Albumasar, also transliterated Abu-Ma'shar, was anArabian astrologer of the 9th century A.D.] In all, d'Ailly delineated four types of Saturn-Jupiterconjunctions: the conjunctio maxima [greatest conjunction, occurring after four changes oftriplicity, so the starting point is repeated, customarily taken to be the initial position of Saturnin Aries] (every 960 years), the conjunctio maior [greater conjunction, occurring with eachchange of triplicity] (every 240 years), the conjunctio magna [great conjunction, occurring witheach change of zodiac sign in each triplicity] (every 60 years), and the conjunctio minor [lesserconjunction, occurring with each conjunction within a single zodiac sign] (every 20 years).D'Ailly located such conjunctions throughout history and related them to the growth of newkingdoms and the rise of new religions. He used astrology, then, as a coherent principle bywhich to explain and observe the course of the world's fate."

4. This brings to mind work of Isaac Newton which I discussed in Chapter 7 of thepresent work. I repeat here Sections 44-47 of that chapter:

44. In Newton's Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St.John, one of his last works, published in 1733, a few years after his death, Newton says: "Forunderstanding the Prophecies, we are, in the first place, to acquaint ourselves with thefigurative language of the Prophets. This language is taken from the analogy between theworld natural, and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic. Accordingly, the wholeworld natural consisting of heaven and earth, signifies the whole world politic, consisting ofthrones and people, or so much of it as is considered in the Prophecy: and the things in thatworld signify the analogous things in this. For the heavens, and the things therein, signifythrones and dignities, and those who enjoy them; and the earth, with things thereon, theinferior people; and the lowest parts of the earth, called Hades or Hell, the lowest or mostmiserable part of them "

45. "In the heavens, the Sun and Moon are, by interpreters of dreams, put for thepersons of Kings and Queens; but in sacred Prophecy, which regards not single persons, theSun is put for the whole species and race of Kings, in the kingdom or kingdoms of the worldpolitic, shining with regal power and glory; the Moon for the body of the common people,considered as the King's wife; the Stars for subordinate Princes and great men, or for Bishopsand Rulers of the people of God, when the sun is Christ; light for the glory, truth, andknowledge, wherewith great and good men shine and illuminate others; darkness for obscurityof condition, and for error, blindness and ignorance; darkning, smiting, or setting of the Sun,Moon, and Stars, for the ceasing of a kingdom, or for the desolation thereof, proportional tothe darkness; darkning the Sun, turning the Moon into blood, and falling of the Stars, for thesame; new Moons, for the return of a dispersed people into a body politic or ecclesiastic."(Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733), p. 16-23.) After this, Newton gives interpretations of fire in various forms, variousmovements of clouds, winds, thunder, lighting, water in various forms, geological formations,

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animals, vegetables and plants, and so on.

46. This passage, in which Newton describes how he reads Biblical prophecies, putslight on his reference (cited above) to Chaldeans as "the most learned astronomers of theirtime", and his complaint (also cited above) that certain ancient Greeks and priests hadcorrupted previously known correct astronomy by declaring that the stars "move in theircourses in the heavens by the force of their souls" and were deemed to be "heavenly deities",and that "gentile Astrology and Theology were introduced by cunning Priests to promote thestudy of stars and the growth of the priesthood and at length spread through the world."Newton speaks of the correspondences between natural objects and processes, on the onehand, and political entities and activities, on the other, as being a matter of figurativelanguage, based on analogy between the two worlds. Yet he believes in the accuracy andindeed inevitability of the predictions made by the Biblical prophets. He says: "And the giving earto the Prophets is a fundamental character of the true Church The authority of theProphets is divine, and comprehends the sum of religion... Their writings contain the covenantbetween God and his people, with instructions for keeping this covenant And no poweron earth is authorized to alter this covenant." Of Daniel in particular, he says: "The predictionsof things to come relate to the state of the Church in all ages; and amongst the old Prophets,Daniel is most distinct in order of time, and easiest to be understood: and therefore in thosethings which relate to the last times, he must be made the key to the rest." (Newton, ibid., p.14-15.)

47. Thus according to Newton's description, Biblical prophecy can give results of thekind the Chaldeans expected from their omen astrology and other methods of prediction theyused, before the invention of personal astrology with its horoscopes and houses. In Newton'sview, as stated in the first part of the Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and theApocalypse of St. John, Biblical prophecy furnishes "in figurative language" strictly determinedpredictions of political matters based on the interpretation of natural processes involvingcelestial and terrestrial natural objects. To be sure, he doesn't admit the divinity of suchobjects. The accuracy of the predictions is presumably guaranteed by the one God alone, whouses the natural objects "figuratively" (whatever that might mean) in order to communicatethis foreknowledge. Newton's views on this question therefore resemble those of Calvin, butdiffer distinctly from those of Thomas Aquinas (to take just two examples). A widespreadjudgment today (as discussed earlier) is that the Chaldeans did attribute divinity to celestialobjects. Newton seems to imply (although I don't know of a place where he says so outright)that the Chaldeans did not do so, and that such beliefs were introduced later by certainGreeks, to the detriment of true astronomy. Of course, Newton knew nothing of the manyBabylonian writings which have been recovered after his time.

5. These passages by Newton and my assessment may be compared with a statementby Smoller, speaking of d'Ailly's use of astrology (p. 122): "Why astrology? ... The answer lies,it seems, in d'Ailly's concordance of astrology and theology -- that is, first, in his insistence thatastrology be considered a 'natural theology' and, second, in his implication, by the use hemade of the stars, that astrology was also a valid science, useful because it lay outside of therealm of prophecy and revelation. That is, he established astral causality to be an essentialcomponent of the divine plan, one entirely in keeping with the central feature of his theology,the dialectic of God's absolute and ordained power. And yet, he relied upon astrology tointerpret the apocalypse [as in the book of Revelations] precisely because it wasnontheological. It offered him evidence drawn from sources other than prophecy andrevelation, which, as he argued, could be contradictory, problematic, and even deceptive."D'Ailly was especially concerned in trying to reconcile and combine Christian doctrines withastrological ones to reject that idea of complete astral determinism or

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fatalism, and the accompanying idea of the non-existence of human free will, other than as akind of illusion. It strikes me now that what Newton may have had in mind when he spoke ofcorruption of astral prediction by ancient Greeks was the attribution to them of anintroduction of the idea or principle of complete determinism to purely astral influences,including in all human affairs. While he would have known nothing of what is said on the claytablets recovered in Mesopotamia since his time, he have known something about the non -fatalistic elements of Babylonian omen astrology from classical sources, or even possiblythat he interpreted Biblical passages in this way.

6. In her Chapter 5, Smoller discusses d'Ailly's concern for the advent of theapocalypse, as predicted in the Revelations of St. John. She says (p. 85): "With the outbreakof the Great Schism in 1378, Pierre d'Ailly and many of his contemporaries assumed that theapocalypse was at hand. They based this dismal conclusion both on their reading of Scriptureand on a long medieval tradition of speculation about the end of time." This may becompared with the statement made by Newton: "The predictions of things to come relate tothe state of the Church in all ages: and amongst the old Prophets, Daniel is most distinct inorder of time, and easiest to be understood: and therefore in those things which relate to thelast times, he must be made the key to the rest." (loc. cit., p. 15). Smoller says (p. 86):"Scripture was by far the most important source of information about the apocalypse for d'Aillyand his contemporaries. Passage in Daniel and Revelation spelled out, albeit in enigmaticform, God's plan for the world's end. Commentaries of these two books were key vehicles foreschatological speculation in the Middle Ages." Of course, Newton is not considered to havelived during the time of the European Middle Ages. Newton says in the section of this workdevoted to Revelations (p. 250-251): "'Tis therefore a part of this Prophecy, that it should notbe understood before the last age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of theProphecy, that it is not yet understood. But if the last age, the age of opening these things, benow approaching, as by the great successes of late Interpreters it seems to be, we have moreencouragement than ever to look into these things. In the general preaching of the Gospel beapproaching, it is to use and our posterity that those words mainly belong: In the time of theend the wise shall understand, but none of the wicked shall understand. Blessed is he thatreadeth, and they that hear the words of this Prophecy, and keep those things which arewritten therein. The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretel times and things by thisProphecy, as if God designed to make them prophets. By this rashness they have not onlyexposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy into contempt. The design of God was muchotherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men'scuriosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might beinterpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifestedthereby to the world. For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be aconvincing argument that the world is governed by providence."

7. D'Ailly was much concerned with uses of astronomy/astrology in establishing achronology of the world, consonant with Scripture, and with matching astronomicalphenomena interpreted astrologically with crucial historical events. Newton spent mucheffort on a revision of chronology, based on astronomical phenomena on the one hand, andclassical authors and Scripture on the other. This, too, involved matching astronomicalphenomena with crucial historical events. In the case of Newton, however, there is an

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absence of discussion of traditional influences of the sort considered by astrologers. On theother hand, there is an absence, so far as I have been able to determine, of refutation of orscorn for astrology as it was practiced in his own time, or earlier. Newton's major work onchronology, published posthumously in 1728, was The Chronology of Ancient KingdomsAmended. In this work, there is a chapter called "Of the Empires of the Babylonians andMedes" in which Newton states (p. 328): "The Babylonians were extreamly addicted toSorcery, Inchantments, astrology and Divi nations, Isa. xlvii. 9, 12, 13. Dab. ii. 2, & v. 11. and tothe worship of Idols, Jer. l. 2, 40. and to feasting, wine and women." In the two works ofNewton being considered here, this is the only passage I have noted in which Newton usesthe word astrology. As far as I can determine, Newton never presented a refutation ofastrology as practiced in his time. He was on the whole silent about astrology, though it wasquite prominent in the England of his time.

8. Newton's work as a chronographer has been studied in detail, along with criticisms ofit made in Newton's time, by Frank E. Manuel in his book Isaac Newton, Historian (1963).Manuel observes (p. 65, 68): "The astronomical proofs of Newton's revision of chronologycenter upon the determination of three ancient dates, among which the precise timing of theArgonautic expedition is the crucial one. It occupied Newton's interest for at least the lastthirty or forty years of his life. The other astronomical proofs concerned the year of KingAmenophis' [of Egypt] death and the period when Hesiod flourished. ... The astronomicaldating of the Argonautic expedition was founded upon the insight that an accuratelymeasured precession of the equinoxes could serve as the key to scientific chronology. ... toapply the idea of the precession to chronology with Newton's daring and persistence wasrevolutionary. The style of the man -- adapting scientific data that are already known to a newfield-- is the same in the chronology as in the physics. Newton had a way of staking all upon asingle idea."

9. Christian chronography goes back to early Christian times. This topic has beentreated by William Adler in his Time Immemorial: Archaic History and its Sources in ChristianChronography from Julius African us to George Syncellus (1989). Such chronography had anelaborate development during the European Middle Ages, and we see from Smoller's study ofd'Ailly's work that it was a lively field during the Renaissance.

Indeed, there is some life in the field up to the present-day, although the field has grown old,and is not as active as it once was. What may be striking in placing Isaac Newton in thistradition is that he lived in the 17th and early 18th centuries, during the height of the periodoften said by historians to contain the Scientific Revolution. In Newton's work, one can seehim engaged not in a Revolution but in an Evolution as far as a transition from theastronomy/astrology which had been prevalent up to his time to the separation of the fieldsof astronomy and astrology as we see them today. An examination of the work of central andperipheral figures who brought about the so-called Scientific Revolution in Europe might wellreveal that one could better speak of an evolution during this period -- perhaps an instance ofcultural punctuated evolution, in which a big change occurred in a relatively short time. Thus,if one wants to talk about paradigm shifts in the manner of Thomas Kuhn, one might bepersuaded to think of them as occurring gradually rather than in some abrupt discontinuousmanner, and as not leading to what Kuhn called incommensurability, but rather to kinds of re-interpretation in which the new retains something of the old.

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Updates and Addenda

U1. I spoke about Stoics in Chapter 1, Sections 39-50, and in Chapter 5, sections 30-33.Anthony Grafton contrasts what he takes to be characteristic of Stoic views of our physicaluniverse with those of many astrologers.495 He says:

“Philosophers who imagined themselves as looking down to earth from the dizzyingvantage point of the heavens normally did so in order to distance themselves from trivialconcerns, to master the deeper realities of the cosmic order. Marcus Aurelius – whom, as we haveseen, Cardano tried to use as his guide into the moral life – laid special weight on this form ofmental discipline. His constant efforts to show that things of the world and the body had nosubstantial worth, as Carlo Ginzburg has recently argued, represented an effort to make alienationfrom all everyday concerns the mark of wisdom. And the royal road to alienation lay through aconsistent effort to contemplate the vast expanse of space and time in the universe – and thus toremove oneself from the momentary concernings, which were revealed, when they appearedbefore this immense backdrop, as worthless. Marcus Aurelius’ sometimes puzzling questions andriddles formed organic parts of a rationally conceived program of mental and spiritualexercises.”496

Grafton continues: “For Cardano and other astrologers, by contrast, the cosmic perspectivethat lent distance had a radically different value. It concentrated their attention on the local andephemeral. Examining the stars that shone at a client’s birth, watching the movements of theplanets during an illness, made the contours of the client’s permanent character, even the minorones, and the details of his short-term case history, even its ephermeral fluctuations, stand out witha new clarity. Distance enhanced the astrologers’ promiscuous attention to the kinds of detailphilosophers disdained. Their cosmic viewpoint focused and intensified their intimate contactwith the emotional and the corporeal side of each individual life, as if a viewpoint on the celestialpole or at the mid-heaven actually magnified the minute details of individual life on earth. In theworld of the astrologers, opposition might not be true friendship, but distance could be trueintimacy.”497

U2. I note that what Grafton refers to as viewpoints of philosophers, presumablyespecially Stoic philosophers and perhaps numerous medieval Christian and other philosophers,fits in with what I’ve said in Chapter 4 in connection with a common view that a major influence ofCopernican theory was to displace mankind from a central place in the universe in people’sminds, and to make people more humble if that’s taken to imply that they were overproud before.

I note also that in trying to explain the extraordinary persistence of astrology over a couple ofthousand years or more, in the face of philosophical, theological and other sorts of

495 Anthony Grafton, Cardano ’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer, 1999, p. 201.

496 The reference to Carlo Ginzburg is to Occhiacci di legno: Nove riflessione sulla distanza, Milan, 1998, p.15-39.497 Grafton refers in this connection to R. Reisinger, Historische Horoskopie, Wiesbaden, 1997.

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condemnations and prohibitions of it, one might look to the way astrologers concentrate onworking out details of this-worldly affairs rather than on other -worldly affairs.

U3. With regard to ancient Mesopotamia, some of whose astral interests I discussed inChapter 4, a treatise on the subject was published in 1999 by Hermann Hunger and David Pingreecalled Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia. A major part of this work is devoted to detailedpresentations and interpretations of astronomical data as recorded and mathematicallymanipulated by ancient Babylonians, based on a large but not exhaustive quantity of the claytablets on which the records were inscribed, and which have been collected by variousarcheologists and stored in various locations. There is a resumé of what is known about thebeginnings of Babylonian astrology and astronomy which agrees on the whole with what Ipresented in Chapter 4. Interest in such matters appears to have been connected early withinterpretations of signs and omens. Hunger and Pingree say:498 "People in Ancient Mesopotamiabelieved that the gods would indicate future events to mankind. These indications were called"signs", in Sumerian (g)iskim, in Akkadian ittu. Such signs could be of very different kinds.There were to be found in the entrails of sacrificial animals, in the shapes of oil spreading afterbeing dropped into water, in phenomena observed in the sky, in strange occurrences in everydaylife. We can classify omens into two trype: those that can be produced when they are wanted(e.g., to answer a question) and those that happen without human action provoking them. Anexample of the first type are omens from the inspection of the entrails of sheep; to the secondtype belong all omens observed in the sky. Omens can be classified according to theirpredictions: some omens concern the king, the country, or the city; others refer to privateindividuals and their fortunes."

U4. Hunger and Pingree go on to emphasize that neither of these types of omens seems tohave been interpreted fatalistically. They say: "One thing is to be kept in mind: the gods send thesigns, but what these signs announce is not unavoidable fate. A sign in a Babylonian text is not anabsolute cause of a coming event, but a warning. By appropriate actions one can prevent thepredicted event from happening. The idea of determinism is not inherent in this concept of sign.The knowledge of signs is however based on experience: once it was observed that a certain signhad been followed by a specific event, it is considered known that this sign, whenever it isobserved again, will indicate the same future event. So while there is an empirical basis forassuming a connection between sign and following event, this does not imply a notion ofcausality."

U5. Eclipses were among the most dangerous omens. Hunger and Pingree describe anunusual method which was employed to avoid dangerous consequences of certain eclipses. Theysay:499 "If an eclipse implied the death of the king of Assyria, some man was chosen to be put inhis place, at least for all appearances. Usually someone whose life was not considered important,like a condemned criminal, seems to have been used for this purpose. He was clad like a king andmade to sit on the throne, but of course he had no influence on government. In order to make itclear to everyone who was to suffer the impending evil, the bad portents were recited to thesubstitute king. The true king, in the meantime, had to behave as inconspicuously as possible,avoid being seen outside the palace, and undergo extensive purifying rites. In letters

498 Hermann Hunger and David Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia , 1999, p. 1499 ibid, p. 25.

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written to him during such a period, the king was to be addressed as "farmer" in order to avoidany association with kingship. It was expected that the dire fate announced by the omen wouldfall on the substitute king. The assumed time of validity of such an omen was 100 days. Ifadditional unfavorable portents were expected (e.g., other eclipses), the substitute would remainenthroned for most of this time. Otherwise, his "reign" could be rather short; it was neitherconvenient nor necessary to extend it. In any case, the substitute king had to die. It is unknownhow his death was brought about, but it was the decision of the true king: in the letters, theadvisers ask the "farmer" on which day the substitute king "should go to his fate". He was thenburied and mourned like a king."500 They go on to say that "According to literary tradition, asubstitute king was enthroned during the reign of Erra-imitti of Isin in the early part of the 2ndmillennium [B.C.]; this case was atypical insofar as the true king died while the substite sat onthe throne, and so the reign passed to the latter.501

U6. Hunter and Pingree state that "We do not know when this belief in omens originated;by the time when texts containing these omens are attested, it is already well established. That isabout the last third of the third millennium B.C." (p. 6) They observe that "In the first millenniumB.C., celestial omens are found organized in a series of tablets called Enuma Anu Enli l ("WhenAnu (and) Enlil") after the opening words of its mythological introduction. ... The mythologicalintroduction (lines 1-8) traces the order of heaven and earth back to the gods Anu, Enlil, and Ea Itcomes in a Sumerian and an Akkadian version which are slightly different from each other. TheSumerian version mentions the Moon god, the Akkadian versian the Sun god, but in differentfunctions."502

U7. With regard to horoscopic astrology, Hunger and Pingree say: "At the end of the 5thcentury B.C., the earliest examples (datable to -409) of what what has been called Babylonianhoro scopes are attested." It is said that so far 32 such horoscopes are known.503 "They begin withthe date on which a child was born. Rarely is the name of the child mentioned. Then follow thepositions of the planets, in the sequence Moon, Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, and Mars.Their positions are more often given by zodiacal sign alone, less often by degree within a sign.Apart from these positions, other astronomical data are included in the horoscope. These can bemore or less distant in time from the date of birth, but were probably considered as possiblysignificant. Such are the length of the month (whether 29 or 30 days), the time interval betweensunrise and moonset just after full moon, and the time between moonrise and sunrise towards theend of the month. Further events are eclipses, including those that were not visible in Babylonia,equinoxes and solstices, and conjunctions of the moon with reference stars. ... Most of thehoroscopes do not give any predictions about the future life of the child. Such predictions wereprobably to be found on different tablets. There exist a number of nativity omen texts whichcould have served this purpose ... Occasionally, such nativity omens are quoted in horoscopes.One could see in a horoscope a listing of the "signs" available for the date of birth, a kind of omenprotasis [statement of the sort "if such and such happens"], for which the apodosis [followingstatement of the sort "then this-or-that will happen"] was to be found in the

500 Hunter and Pingree cite here S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the KingsEsarhaddon and Assurbanipal, part II, 1983, p. xxii-xxxii.501 l . c . ; the reference for this is A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 1975,p. 155. 502ibid,p. 12,14.5 0 3 F. Rochberg-Halton, "Babylonian Horoscopes and their Sources", Orientalia 58, 1989, p. 102-123.

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omen literature. Seen in this way, the horoscopes would be an expansion of the tradition omenprocedure, and not a radical departure from them." 5 0 4

U8. According to Hunger and Pingree, one category of records pertaining to Babylonianastral concerns, in addition to the collections known as Enuma Anu Enli l, is called "Letters andReports". These were sent to Assyrian kings, notably Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, most of thembetween 677 B.C. and 665 B.C. 5 0 5 Another category is known as the "Diaries ". These are said tobe "records of observations and computations made during each period of half a year (six or sevenmonths). The oldest so far was inscribed in -651, but the series probably began in the first year ofNabu-nasir, -746 ... while the latest securely dated Diary is from -60. This means that the traditionof keeping the Diaries persisted through seven centuries --- or even eight, if the Diaries continuedto be kept till the end of cuneiform writing in the late first century A.D. During this time-spanBabylonia was rules by native Dynasties, Achaemenid Persians, Hellenized Macedonians, andParthiana, so it is unlikely that the supporting institution was the state. There is some evidence,from the late second century B.C., that the observers for the Diaries were employed by theTemple of Marduk in Babylon ... The purpose of the compilation of the Diaries has been muchdebated. Two recent studies take opposite stands: Swerdlow argues that they were intimatelyconnected with the Mesopotamian practice of reading celestial omens506, while Slotsky, followinga suggestion by Pingree, interprets them as intended, as far as the celestial observations areconcerned, for astronomical purposes.507" Six reasons supporting the latter hypothesis are given.They are chiefly based on the notions of periodicity which are evident with regard to the datagiven in the Diaries. For example, the majority of the omens given in the Enuma Anu Enlil, andthe Letters and Reports, are in no sense periodic, whereas the Diaries show a concentration onperiodic phenomena. And, it is suggested, "The Diaries treat periodic phenomena as predictable;this deprives them of their meaning as omens. For omens, celestial or otherwise, are sent to manas warnings by the gods. They must be seen, not computed, and they must occur randomly. Thescribes of the Diaries certainly continued to believe in omens since they report some, but theycannot be shown to believe that the celestial and and terrestrial phenomena they primarilyrevealed [in the Diaries] were ominous. The reason for the inclusion of non-periodic phenomenasuch as historical events in the Diaries remains unclear to us."508 The implication is that theBabylonian astral investigators of this period had latched onto the idea of making predictions offuture astronomical phenomena based on observable periodic celestial phenomena, especially onthe motions of celestial objects. Another factor is that the earlier omens often considered what weknowadays interpret as weather or meteorological phenomena, for which, as we know,predictability is uncertain at best, and perhaps impossible in the case of chaotic phenoma, i.e.those which at best we will only be able to attempt prediction by techniques based on nonlineardynamics, and for which inductive reasoning (averages, probabilities) based on statistical analysisof past instances of weather phenomena are only rough guides.

5 0 4 Hunter and Pingree, ibid., p.26-27; references to F. Rochberg-Halton, loc. cit., p. 110, and F. Rochberg,"Babylonian Horoscopes", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 88/1, 1998, p. 16.5 0 5 Hunter and Pingree, ibid., p. 23-24.506N.M. Swerdlow, The Babylonian Theory of the Planets, 1998.507 A.L. Slotsky,The Bourse of Babylon, 1997.508 Hunter and Pingree, ibid., p. 13 9-140.

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U9. The degree to which the Slotsky-Pingree evaluation is correct would be verysignificant in assigning provenance to the rise of mathematical and observational astronomy asindependent, to some degree, from astrology in the sense of reading omens and, later, horoscopesfrom celestial phenomena. In fact, the dates of the earliest known personal horoscopes, reportedabove, and the earliest known indications of astronomical studies based on careful observationsand mathematical techniques are roughly in the same periods. This suggests that the split of whatwe nowadays think of as astrology (in a broad sense) and astronomy (in recent senses of the term)began at roughly the same time, and that this was also perhaps when genethlialogicalinterpretations of celestial phenomena (i.e., predictions of the future based on times of birth ofpersons or data of origin of other entities) began to separate from the more general judicialastrology in which predictions were made for kingdoms and their rulers based directly onalignments of planets and stars without reference to birth dates.

U10. A work by Ann Geneva509 is centered mainly on the astrological of one man, Lilly,described, as the author says, by Bernard Capp as "the most abused as well as the most celebratedastrologer of the seventeenth century."510 Geneva interprets astrology as a "symbolic languagesystem".511 Her Chapter 6, called "'Ars Longa, Vita Brevis': The Starry Language Decoded"discusses Lilly's use of astrological techniques and terminology to "encrypt" his prognostications,which were generally political in nature, and especially concerned the struggles between theParliamentarians and Royalists of the time of Charles I of England. Lilly was much devoted to thecause of the Parliamentarians. For example, she gives the following three methods of such"encryptment" by Lilly::

"1. SUBSTITUTION. Predicting the King's death using the individual geniture tradition bysubstituting aspects of the King's natal geniture to avoid explicit reference to either his name orhis nativity.

2. CELESTIAL OMENS. The use of an ancient tradition linking naatural phenomena such ascomets and eclipses to sublunar events, and specifically to major upheavals in government andthe death of kings.

3. CONJUNCTIONS. The historiographical use of conjunctionist astrology, stemming from theeighth century Sasanian astrologers, to position the King's impending defeat and death withinlarge periodic cycles of time, enhancing the sense of cosmic order an inevitability."512

If I understand Geneva correctly, she means by calling Lilly's version of astrology a "symboliclanguage system" that he used connections between celestial phenomena as parallels to politicalphenomena, and especially to predict the course of political events in England leading up to theexecution of Charles I, and took advantage of a parallel known to initiates between astrologicalnames or symbols, and the names of prominent political and military figures. She downplays therole of astronomy and mathematical calculations in the work of an astrologer. She says: "Whileastrology shared some common ground with astronomy and mathematics, it had developed as a

509 Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars,

1995.

510 ibid., p. 55; the reference is to Capp's English Almanacs 1500 -1800, 1979, p. 57.511 e . g . , the title of Chapter 9 is "The Decline of Astrology as a Symbolic Language System."512 ibid., p. 176

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prognostic art within its own tradition, generating unique diagnostic categories andmethodologies. Precise knowledge of geocentric astronomy was crucial in calculating the initialfigure, but the true skill of the astrological practitioner resided in interpretation. And much likepainters who hire others to paint their backgrounds, astrologers by the early modern period didnot always bother to perform their own computations. Once the celestial paradigm had beenaccurately determined, the astrologer identified the meanings of literally scores of variables,

from astrology's symbolic language into the vernacular. Early modern astrology as such thus hadmore in common with the art of medical diagnosis -- a comparison that also occurred to Ptolemy ---than it did with astronomy or mathematics."513 This view seems to make the astronomical andmathematical bases of astrology (in present-day senses of these terms) rather inessential to thekind of authority that astrological predictions were believed to have had by some, as comparedwith other methods of prognostication, such as crystal-gazing, use of Tarot cards, reading tealeaves, and so on.

U11. Geneva proposes (p. 6) that "One need only consult Ptolemy's second century ADTetrabiblos to see that astronomy and astrology constituted two quite separate, and oftenincompatible pursuits. While to Ptolemy astrology is 'prediction through astronomy', he makesthe clearest possible distinction between the two by publishing his great work on astronomy, theAlmagest, in a separate volume from the Tetrabiblos. Despite this, even the flap copy of theLoeb edition of the Tetrabiblos insists astrology from Ptolemy's day through the Renaissancewas 'fused as a respectable science with astronomy." To my mind, this is rather like saying thatpsychology and biology are two quite separate pursuits, which they are in some respects. Still,the role of biology in psychology may be likened, in my view, to the role of astronomy inastrology, and historically psychology and biology (quite modern terms) were fused integrallyfor a long time, given due allowance to the fact that psychology and biology did not becomeseparate, in some respects, from each other and from other kinds of study until comparativelyrecently. The extent to which psychology can be "reduced" to biology (and biology to chemistry,and chemistry to physics, and even, sometimes, physics to mathematics) is still a matter of livelydebate. There is also the matter of the scope of the terms corresponding to our "astronomy" and"astrology" (e.g., in Latin, Greek and Akkadian) in past times, as compared to later usages, asdiscussed in Chapter I of the present work.

U12. Geneva asks" ... exactly what was Lilly so good at? ... some of his admirers hadstudied astrology for as long as Lilly had done. Yet despite their greater ability in subjects likeastronomy, mathematics, Latin, physics, languages, geometry, theology, and philosophy, Lillyremained their acknowledged superior in judicial astrology. He obviously had a knack: but forwhat? If merely a combination of modern intellectual skills, such as historians often claim ofastrology --- part psychology, religion, mathematics, physics, sociology, journalism, etc. --- hadbeen required then surely others would have triumphed. If he were alive now, Lilly would bepracticing in none of these professions. I finally decided that this was a genuinely obsoletecategory. Nothing in the twentieth century is comparable. The answer then became self-evident:Lilly was a genius in exactly the category of knowledge which he claimed as his own --- that ofjudicial astrology. What skills this comprised when stripped of distorting modern contexts wasanother matter, one which the remainder of this study will try to explicate." 514 If I

5 1 3 Geneva, ibid. , p. 9514 ibid . , p . 71.

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understand this claim correctly, Geneva is attributing to Lilly possession of a lost art, and onewhich evidently stands alone, independent of other kinds of arts and sciences, such as those shelisted. Does this mean that Lilly had some facility for some kind of direct revelation obtainedfrom arranging and contemplating what Geneva calls the symbols, or symbolic language, ofastrology, which presumably was a kind of medium for his prognostications? My reading ofGeneva's work leads me to speculate that what she has shown is rather that Lilly's genius laymainly in his ability to diagnose and predict major political movements of his time, based (asGeneva quotes him as saying) on careful study and attention to political events and processes, andcommunicated by him in a clever way by means of astrological concepts and terminology. Iwonder, too, whether or not he was also a kind of genius at political propaganda, communicating inhis symbolic or encrypted way in the face of strict censorship and extreme punishment fordisloyalty to the king, and perhaps also influencing the outcomes which he predicted.

U13. I don't find in Geneva's work a study of predictions of Lilly which failed, ascompared to those which succeeded. She does note, however, that "when Lilly found theastrological tradition wanting, he did not hesitate to develop a new methodology using existingastrological formulations. He also expressed his intention of passing it on to his astrologicalinheritors, an ambition in keeping with his more respectable scientific contemporaries."515 Andfinally, there is Geneva's quotation of a statement by Lilly: "my arguments are notdemonstrative, or can be made so: I acknowledge my Prognosticks to be only grounded uponconjectural probabilitie, and are not subject to the senses, or Geometricall demonstrations; thus Ispeak to avoyd carping."516

U14. It is interesting to compare the points of view of Ann Geneva described above, andthose of Ulla Koch-Westenholz.517 Koch-Westenholz distinguishes between "artificial" and"natural" divination. Following Cicero (de divinatione 1.11, 2.26), she defines natural divination as"direct, inspired communications from the gods that 'the mind seizes from without', e.g. dreamsand oracles." The point of view of Geneva seems to attribute to Lilly's practice of judicialastrology something of the nature of such natural divination, not essentially based on anythingelse than direct contacts with the future (whether from the "gods" or God or not). Perhaps this ismore than Geneva wants to claim, but there is a tendency toward this, I think, in her proposalsthat Lilly didn't depend on astronomy, mathematics, etc., except as a mode of communicatingwhat he "saw" for the future. "Artificial divination" is defined by Koch-Westerholz as including"everything where 'computation and constant observation' is necessary to ascertain the gods'will." She goes on to say that "While inspired divination certainly is attested in AncientMesopotamia, it appears to have been of minor importance, and the bulk of our sources, the omencompendia, concerns deductive divination." She distinguishes between two kinds of deductivedivination, "provoked omens" such as found in induced examination of entrails or oil slicks inwater basins, and "unprovoked omens" such as arise from interpretations of occurrences which"appear without being asked for, e.g. astrology." She observes that these two kinds of deductivedivination were practiced by different kinds of experts: "the baru,

515 Geneva, ibid., p. 184.

516 ibid., p. 281.517Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology: An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian CelestialDivination, 1995.

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diviner, whose main field was provoked omens" and "the tupsarru, scribe/scholar, whoseexpertise included unprovoked omens and exorcism."518

U15. Geneva proposed a quite radical separation of astronomy and astrology, even inantiquity, whereas Koch-Westerholz states: "As a rule astronomy and astrology have always beentreated separately, while in fact they were never regarded as separate before the end of theRenaissance -- and certainly not in Ancient Mesopotamia." This view is reflected in the title ofthe present work, The Marriage and Divorce ofAstronomy and Astrology. Koch-Westerholzrefers to an article by F. Rochberg-Halton519 in which it is recommended "that historiansdifferentiate between the specific goals and method of ancient astronomy and astrology. ... Butshe also stresses that 'the training and interests of the scribes in both these areas very likelystemmed from one intellectual tradition.' A close link continued also during the evolution ofmathematical astronomy. ... With the rise of mathematical astronomy in the 5th century B.C., bywhich it became possible to calculate the movements of the planets and predict eclipses, it is hardto understand how such events could be seen as portentous accidents or willed communicationsfrom the gods. In fact, the whole discipline of astrology became fundamentally changed, both as tobasic principles, and its uses ... " 5 2 0 I suggest that Koch-Westerholz, when speaking of the rise ofmathematical astronomy in the 5th century B.C., is referring to what I would call the rise ofgeometric astronomy. There is abundant evidence, e.g. in the works of Otto Neugebauer and hiscolleagues, that the ancient Babylonians practiced a kind of mathematical astronomy, albeit notbased on geometric models. In modern terms, they practiced, for example, interpolation of valuesin tables of observations by various arithmetical schemes for purposes of making predictions ofeclipses, which was and still is use of a kind of mathematics by most definitions of the term"mathematics". Cf. Chapter 4, section 46, of the present work. Still, it is still accurate, I expect, tosay that the rise of geometric astronomy in the 5th century B .C. (or perhaps a bit earlier)transformed the practice of astral prediction.

U16. Koch-Westerholz observes that "The provoked omens are signs deliberately sought toanswer specific questions formally addressed to the gods. By their very nature, such signs arealways sent by gods. Unprovoked omens may likewise be regarded as willed divinecommunications, or they may be seen as "signs" (ittu) without any sender, like our black catcrossing the street or what we would call 'symptoms'. This ambivalence between a theistic and amechanistic world view permeates much of Babylonian thought and is duly reflected in theastrological texts. ... the relation between ominous events and their interpretations could beregarded as part of a purely mechanical scheme of things." Also, it was possible to avert ormitigate a predicted bad event by means of special rituals, involving prayers and offerings. Koch-Westerholz says: "In fact, most bad omens could be averted mechanically by performing theappropriate namburbu [rituals]. This is a far cry from the gods ruling the universe by theirimmutable will."521 This presumably applies to all kinds of Babylonian divination practices andtheories. Thus there appears to have been no commitment, at least up to the Hellenistic period, tostrict determinism or fatalism in connection with the observation and interpretation of omens.

518 ibid., p. 9-10.

519 F. Rochberg-Halton, American Orienta l Series, 1987, 67, p327 ff. 520Koch-Westerholz, ibid., p. 21-22.5 2 1 ibid,p. 11-12.

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U17. On the origins of astrology as practiced by the Babylonians, Koch-Westerholzdiscusses a view attributed to P. J. Huber.522 Huber is said to have suggested that omen astrologyarose by a process similar to that which has been atrributed to the rise of extispicy, predictions offuture events based on examining and interpreting the entrails of sacrificed sheep, which Koch-Westerholz calls "the Babylonian divinatory discipline par excellence. According to this view, the"protasis", the ominous phenomenon "read" from a liver was linked to "apodasis", the signifiedevent, by "circumstantial association." The procedure, presumably, was thus to link the state of theentrails with a near-contemporaneous event for the purpose of making future predictions. It wasthen a kind of causation concluded from correlation (perhaps by an inductive process in whichmore than one example was involved?). Then, says Koch-Westerholz, in this view of the originsof omen prognostication, "Closely following the empirical stage ... came the theoretical stagewhen the omina were written down in long tabular compendia on tablets. At the same time, theempirical findings were 'phrased in accordance with the code', i.e. a set of general rules or atheoretical system, and remaining blanks in the system, for which no empitical data wereavailable, could be filled out by interpolation."523 Presumably Koch-Westerholz is not referringhere to interpolation as a mathematical or arithmetical technique. P. J.Huber is said by Koch-Westerholz to have suggested an analogous origin for omen astrology, based to start with on lunareclipses being associated with the deaths of certain Old Akkadian kings. Koch-Westerholz findsproblems with Huber's arguments, as she discusses on p. 35-36. There seems to have been a biasedselection of available evidence by Huber, and also doubts about the chronology used by Huber.524

U18. Koch-Westerholz argues that various suggestions about the origins of Babyloniandivinatory practices in general have overstressed the precedence in time of empirical data overtheoretical hypotheses. She says "In my opinion, the idea of an empirical background ofBabylonian divination is very difficult to uphold. ... It is generally agreed by modernphilosophers of science that knowledge about the world is rarely obtained by purely empiricalobservation, without some pre-existing theory to integrate the observed data. In other words, the'circumstantial association' assumed to be the fountainhead of the historical omens, is in itselfunlikely." She cites as "modern philosophers of science" N. R. Hanson and Karl Popper 525, whoare two of the early pioneers, along with many others (e.g. Alexander Koyré) in maintaining aprimacy of theoretical and deductive methods over inductive methods based on empirical datagathered in advance, without any theoretical bases fixed in advance. The latter as a view of theway science proceeds is often attributed to Francis Bacon. Caricatures of the two positions aresometimes advanced. On one side, it is claimed that empirical data can be gathered without anyparticular plan as to what conclusions can be drawn from the data, and conclusions then drawnand hypotheses made and theories constructed afterwards by general methods which can beapplied to any kind of empirical data thus obtained. On the other side, it may be claimed that anygathering of empirical data is guided from the start by some sort of hypotheses or theories heldby the gatherers, perhaps without the gatherers being aware or fully aware of the theories

522P. J. Huber, "Dating by Lunar Eclipse Omens with Speculations on the Birth of Omen Astrology", FS AsgerAaboe, Acta Historica Scientiarum Naturalium et Medicinalium, Vol. 39, 1987.523 Koch-Westerholz, ibid., p. 14.524 ibid. p. 35-36.525N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, 1965 and Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959 (this wasthe English translation -- the original German version, Logik der Forschung, was published in 1935).

they have in mind. In my view, the actual state of affairs in such procedures is a continualinteraction of gathering empirical data and theorizing on the basis of it, in which the primacy ofone over the other changes over time and among different gatherers. To argue about which comesfirst seems to me unproductive, although in specific instances, it may be possible to point to one orthe other as having come first in a specific endeavor to attain knowledge or probable knowledgeof some sort.

U19. Later in her work, Koch-Westerholz also speaks in such a way that she considers theempirical and theoretical to be in continual interaction, although she attributes a sort of primacyto the theoretical. She is concerned to consider what sorts of assumptions guided Babylonianastrologers in choosing what to observe and how to classify their observations. She says:"Babylonian astrology was the result of the interaction of practical observation and theoreticalschematization well known from the other omen series. The crucial phenomena in divination:heliacal [first appearance just before sunrise, last setting just after sunset] and acronycial [lastrising just after sunset] risings and settings, stationary points [as when a planet retrogrades],conjunctions [two or more bodies having the same celestial longitudes, i.e. one just "above" theother] and other positions in relation to a particular celestial body, eclipses, colours and otheroptical phenomena, all derive from actual observations rather than speculations. But it is obviousthat practical experience was subordinate to theory or schematization: in order to fit the variousschemata, also phenomena which never occur in reality were listed in the series, especially in theeclipse sections ... The schematization included binary oppositions like: left - right, above - below,in front of - behind, sunrise - sunset, bright - faint, on time - late/early; and qualifications like:colours: white, black, red and yellow; direction: the four quarters; time: month, day, watch,duratiion; location: path of Anu, Enlil or Ea (Footnote: The paths of Enlil, Anu and Ea wereprobably areas along the eastern horizon rather than bands in the sky parallel to the celestialequator as previously supposed ...) Furthermore, these opposites and qualifications do not havethe same meaning in all contexts; astrology is very far from the neat generalizations striven for inbarutu [artificial omens], but there are some tendencies in that direction." Koch -Westerholz givesan interesting example of the application of the "bright - faint" distinction: "A simple rule that iscommon to all kinds of Babylonian divination is of almost mathematical rigour: within the sameomen, a good sign with a good sign has a good prediction; good combined with bad means bad;bad combined with bad means good. Expressed algebraically, the rule is also familiar to us: ++ =+; +- = -; -- = +. An often quoted example of this rule is found in the astrological texts: if a well-portending planet is bright: favourable (++ = +); if it is faint: unfavourable (+- = -); of it is faint:favourable (- - = +). But the rule might also be illustrated from texts of extispicy or lecanomancyas early as Old Babylonian."526

U20. David Pingree gives numerous details which supplement my discussions of origins ofastrology in Babylonia, Greece, and other parts of the world.527 In this work, Pingree doesn't addmuch to what has already been said here about origins of astrology in Babylonia itself. There arelarge gaps in what is known, and much of what is said about this remains conjectural. Of the

origins of what we nowadays often refer to as horoscopic astrology, Pingree says: "The science ofastrology was developed in, most probably the late 2nd or early 1st century B.C. as a means topredict, from horoscopic themata drawn up for the moment of an individual's birth (or

526Koch-Westerholz, ibid., p. 97-98, 11.

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5 2 7 David Pingree, From Astral Omens to Astrology: From Babylon to Bikaner, 1997.

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5 2 8 Pin gree , p . 21-24 .

conception), the fate of that native. This form of astrology, called genethlialogy, is rooted inAristotelian physics and Hellenistic astronomy, but also borrowed much from Mesopotamia andsome elements from Egypt as well as developing many theories of its own. The adaptation of thisform of astrology to determine the best time for initiating actions is known as catarchic astrology.These are the two main forms of astrology known in the West; interrogational astrology wasdeveloped in India in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. on the basis of Greek catarchic astrology,and historical astrology in Sasanian Iran in perhaps the 5th or 6th century A.D. on the basis ofcontinuous forms of Greek genethlialogy. All of these types of astrology depend on the notionthat the planets, in their eternal rotations about the earth, transmit motion (change) to the fourelements and to the assemblages of elements, animate and inanimate, in the sublunar world. Thistheory is completely different from that of celestial omens, in which the gods, whose physiclmanifestations are the constellations and planets, send messages concerning their intentionsregarding kings and countries, by means of celestial phenomena. That these divine intentions canbe altered by the use of propitiatory rituals (namburbis) in Mesopotamia, santis in India)emphasizes the fundamental conceptual difference between omens and astrology." Pingree goeson to say, however, that astrology does have a Mesopotamian background, and gives an exampleof this "pre-astrology" from "a 13th century B.C. Hittite tablet based on a translation from an OldBabylonian Akkadian text in which a brief prediction is made for a person depending on the monthin which he was born." Based on an example used by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus inanalyzing the conditional "If someone is born when Canicula (Sirius) is rising, he will not die inthe ocean", which appears to be related to a record in a Babylonian principal manual of instructiontranslated by Pingree (or perhaps by A. Sachs) as "The place of Cancer: death in the ocean".Pingree says "This correlation, if correct, shows that the Babylonian science of birth omens wasknown in the Greek world by the late 3rd century B.C." "But," says Pingree, "Babylonian birthomens were probably known in Greece long before these Stoic philosophers debated about theirvalidity." Pingree cites Eudoxus, one of the great mathematicians of classical Greece, as one who,according to Cicero, recommended that "one should not at all believe 'the Chaldeaeans in theirprediction and noting down of anyone's life from the day of birth." The theory in the 5th book ofEuclid's Elements [of geometry] is attributed to Eudoxus (4th century B.C.E.), in which the firstknown treatment of what has become known as the real number system was presented, one whichis still as sound today as it was in the 4th century B.C., and was in use in its original form untilsometime in the 19th century A.D. In that century, several alternative versions were presented,e.g. those of Augustin Cauchy, Richard Dedekind and Georg Cantor, whose major differencesfrom the development given by Eudoxus on matters of "existence" of real numbers other thanrational numbers (ratios of whole numbers). Eudoxus is also credited by Archimedes with firstrigorously proving formulas for volumes connected with spheres and cylinders, and perhaps mostfamously of all for presenting a geometrically based planetary theory, i.e. a geometrical model forthe planets known in his time of what we now call our solar system On the other hand, Pingreeobserves that Proclus (5th century C.E.) cites Theophrastus (around 300 B.C.) as "praising thetheory of the Chaldaeans in his day which 'predicts the lives and deaths of individuals.' " 5 2 8

U21. Pingree goes on to describe influences of what he calls Babylonian astronomy(rather than astrology, or interpretation of celestial omens -- ) in India, which he says are

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"perceptible in Sanskrit texts of the first half of the last millennium B.C."529 In subsequentchapters, he describes further transmission of astral predictive material in India, Iran (Persia) andByzantium. It appears that remaining records about Persian astrological practices are scarce,presumably because most of them were destroyed after the advent of Mohammed. In India,relevant Sanskrit records are more prevalent.

U 2 2 . The title of the book by Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars, 1991, doesn'tindicate the scope of this work. The first two-thirds of the work is devoted to setting the stage fora presentation of Origen's views on astral influences. While Scott is primarily interested inimplications for Christian theology, in my view Scott also sets a stage for showing influences on andinfluences of the marriage between astronomy and astrology as found in Europe and northern Africaand southwestern Asia in classical, Hellenistic and early medieval times. Scott opens with aconsideration of the thought of pre-Socratic philosophers of classical Greece, and the thought ofPlato on the nature of the stars and planets. He observes: "In contrast to many other pre-industrialsocieties, a formal cult of the stars was almost unknown in ancient Greece. Aristophanes, Plato,and Aristotle regarded their worship as either an archaic or foreign practice, but the veneration ofheavenly bodies, particularly the sun and moon, was not unusual in popular piety. Commonpractices always affect intellectual life, and Greece was no exception; even in the Parthenon, thevery symbol of classical Athens, the sun and moon appear as gods. ... And yet this commonsupposition tht the heavens were alive was increasingly examined, questioned, and even rejectedas Greek astronomy began its scientific development on the other side of the Greek-speakingworld among the Ionians. As a reult, belief in the divinity of the stars is conspicuously rare inGreek philosophy between Alcmaeon and Plato." Scott reviews some of the fragments we haveleft of the pre-Socratic philosophers, such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Empedocles,Archelaos, Democritus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, as to speculations about the physical nature ofthe heavenly bodies. They were said to be "made of earth and fire", "fiery bodies", "rocks" or "redhot stones", "full of fire", and so on. Scott says: "The precise religious beliefs of the Ioniannaturalists or of those who accepted their teachings on the heavens is not clear, but they wereperceived as denying the gods, as Aristophanes' play The Clouds makes clear. ... Plutarch indicatesthe unpopularity of this naturalism with respect to the heavens, referring here to the teachings ofAnaxagoras: 'It was still not talked about and spread only among a few, who received it with somecaution rather than giving it much credence. They could not bear the natural philosophers andwhat were then called the 'star-gazers', because they frittered away divinity into irrational causes,unforeseen forces, and necessary occurrences.' "5 3 0

U23. Plato's views about the heavens and stars changed over the course of his lifetime. Heappears to have been more concerned with their roles in the cosmos in his later life. In theStatesman, one of the later dialogues, he speaks of the planets, taken to include our sun and moonas well as the five planets (in our present-day sense) which are visible without instruments. Henotes, as Scott puts it, that "in the first era of history God imparts his own motion to the universe,but that there is another era in which the universe begins to move in the opposite direction underits own power, since its Maker has made it both living and rational. Thus for the first time (if theusual chronologies of Plato's works can be trusted) Plato suggests that an independent rationalpower is at work in at least some of the heavenly bodies (i.e. the

529 ibid, p. 31; on p. 32, Pingree refers to "Babylonian astral sciences" in this connection.

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5 2 8 Pin gree , p . 21-24 .

530 Alan Scott, Origen and the Li fe o f the S ta rs , 1991, p. 3-4, 5-6.

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planets), and that this accounts for an observable phenomenon."531 The planets are thus endowedaccording to Plato's story, with a power belonging to themselves.

U24. In the Statesman, Plato is concerned about how the majority of celestial objects, the"fixed" stars, revolve every day one way, from East to West, but that a few prominent "stars",namely the five planets (though not the Sun and Moon), while they share in this diurnal rotationsometimes go the opposite way with respect to the fixed stars. Plato has the Stranger say,beginning at section 268, by way of telling a "pleasant story": "There is an era in which the godhimself assists the universe on its way and helps it in its rotation. There is also an era in which hereleases his control. He does this when its circuits have completed the due limit of the timethereto appointed. Thereupon it begins to revolve in the contrary sense under its own impulse --for it is a living creature and has been endowed with reason by him who framed it in thebeginning." 5 3 2 In Plato's later very influential dialogue Timaeus, his cosmology is moredeveloped and detailed. In connection with how Plato's speculations about the natures of celestialbodies influenced the development and acceptance of astrological doctrines, it is suggestive thathe assigns to stars two kinds of motion, the diurnal revolutions from East to West, and also axialrotations. In addition, the five planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, have a differentkind of motion peculiar to them, retrograde motion from West to East with respect to the fixedstars. The movement from East to West of the fixed stars, shared by the planets (including the Sunand Moon) is, according to Plato's story, imparted to them and perhaps maintained by theDemiurge, Plato's name for the deity who creates and manages the physical universe as based oneternal models or Ideas established and managed by a superior deity. Thus celestial objects do notmaintain this motion from within themselves, although they are said to be alive and have souls.The axial rotations of the celestial objects hypothesized by Plato are said to originate and bemaintained from within the bodies, and thus can be said to be powers they themselves possess. Inaddition, the retrogradation of the five planets shows that they have an additional power, as do theannual spiral motions of the sun and moon with respect to the fixed stars. The upshot of all this, asapplied to development of astrology, is that Plato assigns a certain power to all the stars, andadditional powers to the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Our Earth is alsosaid to be alive and to have a soul. Now, by way of relating the stars and their powers to people,Plato says that with the residue of that which the Demiurge had "mixed and blended the soul ofthe universe", a residue which was no longer as pure as it was before, the Demiurge "divided itinto souls equal to number with the stars, and distributed them, each soul to its several star." 533

U25. Plato goes on: "And he who should live well for his due span of time should journeyback to the habitation of his consort star and there live a happy and congenial life; but failing ofthis, he should shift at his second birth into a woman' and if in this condition he still did not ceasefrom wickedness, then according to the character of his depravation, he should constantly bechanged into some beast of a nature resembling the formation of that character, and should have norest from the travail of these changes, until letting the revolution of the Same and uniform withinhimself draw into its train all that turmoil of fire and water and air and earth that had later grownabout ir, he should control its irrational turbulence by discourse of reason and

531 ibid., p. 10.

532 Plato, Sta tesman, translated by J. B. Skemp, 1952, p. 23 ff. of edition of 1957.533 Plato, Timaeu s , 41D-E, translated by F. M. Cornford in his Plato ' s Cosmology , 1937, p. 142 of the 1957

edition.

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return once more to the form of his first and best condition." Having created the souls ofhumans, each human corresponding to a star, the Demiurge "sowed them, some in the Earth,some in the Moon, some in all the other instruments of time."534 For Plato identified the planets as"instruments of time".

U26. Scott says: "Aside from the Epicureans, all the major philosophical schools in theHellenistic era believed in the divinity of the stars. Even the notorious atheist Euhemerus (fl. 300BC) acknowledged that they (at least) were gods. And yet an identificaion was not without itsdifficulties. A problem particularly vexing for Platonists was the visibility of the stars (sincedivinity was thought to be perceptible to the mind only and not to the senses), and this was afrequent topic of discussion in Platonic circles. ... One response was to say that in the case of thestars, soul was perfectly adapted to body and the lower and visible part to a higher intelligiblepart. The 'secondary' gods exist through the higher invisible gods, depending on them as the star'sradiance depends on the star. In the star the divine soul exercises a perfect supremacy. Chaeremondoes not seem particularly interested in any other gods besides the visible ones, but such a viewwas unusual in philosophers of the period, for if the supreme God is altogether simple and is in noway made of ruler and rules, it is difficult to undersstand how any visible (and therefore material)body could be truly divine. Recognizing this, Alexandrian astronomers began to refer to theplanets by their appearance rather than using the names of gods, since the mythologicalassociations of the older practice were plain to them. ... Philosophers of this period devised a widevariety of ways of referring to the astral gods which emphasized their intermediate divine naturewhich was superior to the human condition but inferior to the supremely divine. Most of theseways of talking about the heavenly bodies stemmed from Plato and from the Epinomis."535 TheEpinomis has been and sometimes still is ascribed to Plato, but some later scholars hold that whilethe Epinomis has something in common with Plato's later work, especially the Laws to which it isa kind of sequel, it appears to have been written by a follower of Plato, perhaps Philipp of Opus.Scott says that "Emphasis on the importance of the heavens is carried to its furthest extreme in theEpinomis ... the Epinomis declares the wise man to be, not the philosopher, but the astronomer".As discussed in Chapter 1 of the present work, the word translated here as "astronomer" inprevious times customarily denoted a kind of combination of what nowadays we mean by"astronomer" and what we mean by "astrologer".536

U27. "One view which was frequent in Stoic and Platonic circles," says Scott, "was that asthe stars were intermediate and subordinate gods, so they regulated an intermediate andsubordinate providence. The idea as we have seen is implicit in Plato, Aristotle, and the Academyand, despite the ambiguity of the stars' relation to ether or God in Stoicism, it was taken over byChrysippus, who believed that stars govern the world in accordance with providence. ... Acommon later expression of this is that there are different grades of providence, namely primaryand secondary, and in some writers tertiary. Primary providence (that of the supreme God) sees tothe beneficial arrangement of universals, while secondary providence operating through the starssees to the generation and arrangement of that which is mortal and particular beneath the moon,and a tertiary providence is sometimes assigned to the daemons." Daemons, in this usage, refers tolesser deities, e.g. deified heroes, and not

534 ibid., 42B-42D, p. 144.

535 Scott, ibid., p. 55, 57-58.536 Scott, ibid., p. 20-22.

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necessarily evil kinds of deities. At this point Scott comments on the relationship of philosophyand religion of the Hellenistic era to astrology. He says: "This concept of the stars' activity is inpart shaped by older ideas on the place of heaven in controlling generation and daily occurrencessuch as the weather, and was strengthened by the growth in importance of astrology in theHellenistic period. Much of what was said in older philosophy helped pave the way for astrology,and despite some vigorous protests, both Stoicism and Platonism were thought by many of theirlater representatives to be compatible with this discipline. The combination of philosophy withastrology reaches it height in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, but it is already present inphilosophy before Origen in the view that the stars exercise control over destiny (eimarmene).Thus a variety of factors were at work causing the stars to be ascribed with important functionsconcerning terrestrial life. This in turn increased the pressure on philosophers to give someaccount of their religious importance."537

U28. Scott next, on his way to discussing works of Origen, comments on works of Philo ofAlexandria (c. 20 B.C.E. - 40 C.E.), so far as they relate to opinions on the nature of stars andplanets. His conclusion is: "He [Philo] follows the conventions of his day in honouring the starsbut he is both too good a Jew and too good a Platonist to take this to its logical consequences. Forall their glory, the stars are distinctly inferior to God, who is above heaven. The cosmologicalinconsistencies which were present individually in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoa come to acrescendo in Philo, and this happens in part because he is not able to criticize and correct histeachers, and because he has sometimes combined his sources in a clumsy way, but it has alsohappened because of his philosophical and religious integrity: he refuses to put anything (even thestars) on the same level as God. His efforts are of great importance for students of Origen, becauseOrigen will follow him both in attempting to present a scriptural cosmology, and in placing strictlimitations on the usual pagan religious understanding of heaven. One idea, however, whichOrigen adopts and which is not present in Philo or any of the classical philosophical schools is therecognition of the possibility of evil in heaven. This view, which is of great importance for Origenin understanding the place of the stars in the divine economy, gradually developed in Hellenism,and exerted a great influence on early Christianity. That the heavenly bodies affected the lilfebelow was a philosophical commonplace, but our sources in the early imperil era are sharplydivided about the nature of this influence."538

U29. Here are some excerpts from the works of Philo to illustrate his beliefs about thestars, taken from the elegant Victorian translation of Philo's works by C. D. Yonge, firstpublished in 1854-1855. First, from a work commonly known as On the Creation, althoughYonge gives its complete title as A Treatise on the Account of the Creation of the World, asGiven by Moses, we have:

" X V I . (55) But the Creator having a regard to that idea of light perceptible only by theintellect, which has been spoken of in the mention made of the incorporeal world, createdthose stars which are perceptible by the external senses, those divine and superlativelybeautiful images, which on many accounts he placed in the purest temple of corporealsubstance, namely in heaven. One of the reasons for his so doing was that they might givelight; another was that they might be signs; another had reference to their dividing the

5 3 7 Scott , ibid. , p . 6 1 -62.

5 3 8 ibid. , p . 74 - 75.

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times of the seasons of the year, and above all dividing days and nights, of months andyears, which are the measures of time; and which have given rise to the nature of number.(56) And how great is the use and how great the advantage derivable from each of theaforesaid things, isplainfrom their efect. But with a view to a more accuratecomprehension of them, it may perhaps not be out ofplace to trace out the truth in aregular discussion. Now the whole of time being divided into two portions day and night,the sovereignty of the day the Father has assigned to the Sun, as a mighty monarch: andthat of the night he has given to the moon and to the multitude of the other stars. (57) And thegreatness of the power and sovereignty of the sun has its most conspicuous proof in whathas been already said: for he, being one and single has been allotted for his own share andby himself one half portion of all time, namely day; and all the other lights in conjunctionwith the moon have the other portion, which is called night. And when the sun rises all theappearances of such numbers of stars are not only obscured but absolutely disappear fromthe efusion of his beams; and when he sets then they all assembled together, begin todisplay their own peculiar brilliancy and their separate qualities.

"XIX. (58) And they have been created, as Moses tells us, not only that they might sendlight upon the earth, but also that they might display signs offuture events. For either bytheir risings, or their settings, or their eclipses, or again by their appearances andoccultations, or by the other variations observable in their motions, men oftentimesconjecture what is about to happen, the productiveness or unproductiveness of the crops, thebirth or loss of their cattle, fine weather or cloudy weather, calm and violent storms ofwind, floods in the rivers or droughts, a tranquil state of the sea and heavy waves, unusualchanges in the seasons of the year when either the summer is cold like winter, or the winterwarm, or when the spring assumes the temperature of autumn or the autumn that ofspring. (59) And before now some men have conjecturally predicted disturbances andcommotions of the earth from the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, and innumerableother events which have turned out most exactly true: so that it is a most veracious sayingthat "the stars were created to act as signs, and moreover to mark the seasons. "And bythe word seasons the divisions of the year are here intended. And why may not this bereasonably afirmed? For what other idea of opportunity can there be except that it is thetime for success? And the seasons bring everything to perfection and set everything right;giving perfection to the sowing and planting offruits, and to the birth and growth ofanimals. (60) They were also created to serve as measure of time; for it is by the appointedperiodical revolutions of the sun and moon and other stars, that days and months andyears are determined. And moreover it is owing to them that the most useful of all things,the nature of number exists, time having displayed it;for from one day comes the limit, andfrom two the number two, and from three, three, and from the notion of a month is derivedthe number thirty, and from a year that number which is equal to the days of the twelvemonths, and from infinite time comes the notion of infinite number. (61) To such great andindispensable advantages do the natures of the heavenly bodies and the motions of thestars tend. And to how many other things might I also afirm that they contribute which areas yet unknown to us?for all things are not known to the will of man; but of the thingswhich contribute towards the durability of the

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universe, those which are established by laws and ordinances which God has appointedto be unalterable for ever, are accomplished in every instance and in every country."

Here Philo says that astral or astrological prediction is feasible, inasmuch as one reason Godcreated the stars and planets is to give us signs.

U30. On the other hand, Philo maintains elsewhere, in effect, that while the stars andplanets give us signs, they don't cause the events which the signs indicate will or may happen. Inthis view, the stars and planets are one way God communicates to humans. In an appendix to histranslation of the works of Philo, Yonge translates a treatise not found in the now standard Loebedition of Philo's works, with the title A Treatise Concerning the World, we read:

"I. There is no existing thing equal in honour to God, but he is the one Ruler, andGovernor, and King, to whom alone it is lawful to govern and regulate eve rything; forthe verse- "A multitude of masters is not good,

"Let there one sovereign be, one king of all, " {1}{Homer, Iliad: 2.204.}

is not more appropriate to be said with respect to cities and men than to the world andGod, for it follows inevitably that there must be one Creator and Master of one world; andthis position having been laid down and conceded as a preliminary, it is only consistentwith sense to connect with it what follows from it of necessity. Let us now, therefore,consider what inferences these are. God being one being, has two supreme powers of thegreatest importance. By means of these powers the incorporeal world, appreciable only bythe intellect, was put together, which is the archetypal model of this world which is visibleto us, being formed in such a manner as to be perceptible to our invisible conceptions justas the other is to our eyes. Therefore some persons, marveling at the nature of both theseworlds, have not only worshipped them in their entirety as gods, but have also deified themost beautiful parts of them, Imean for instance the sun, and the moon, and the wholeheaven, which, without any fear or reverence, they called gods. And Moses, perceiving theideas which they entertained, says, "O Lord, King of all gods, "{2} [Deuteronomy 10:17.]in order to point out the great superiority of the Ruler to his subjects. And the originalfounder of the Jewish nation was a Chaldaean [Babylonian] by birth, being the son of afather who was much devoted to the study of astronomy, and being among people who weregreat studiers of mathematical science, who think the stars, and the whole heaven, and thewhole world gods; and they say that both good and evil result from their speculations andbelief, since they do not believe in anything as a cause which is apart from those thingswhich are visible to the outward senses. But what can be worse than this, or morecalculated to display the want of true nobility existing in the soul, than the notion of causesin general being secondary and created causes, combined with an ignorance of the onefirst cause, the uncreated God, the Creator of the universe, who for these and innumerableother reasons is most excellent, reasons which because of their magnitude human intellectis unable to apprehend? but this founder of the Jewish nation having conceived an idea ofhim in his mind, and looking upon him as the true God, forsook his native country and hisfamily, and his father’s house, knowing that if he remained, the deceits of the polytheistic

doctrine also remaining in his soul would render his intellect incapable of discoveringthe nature of the one God, who is alone everlasting, and the father of everything else,

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whether appreciable only by the intellect or perceptible to the outward senses ; but if hedeparted and emigrated, then he saw that deceit would also depart from his mind, whichwould then change its erroneous opinions into truth."

U3 1. So far as astral prediction is concerned, a basic distinction has often been made, fromancient times to the present, between celestial bodies having various kinds of powers of their ownover human affairs and destinies, and celestial bodies furnishing signs, presumably related to non-astral powers which affect human affairs and destinies. Astrologers and astronomers have longbeen concerning with predicting the future. As I have argued in this work, and as many othershave maintained, often enough in the past one and the same person who did this, or believed itpossible to do this, engaged in or made use of activities concerned with predicting the futurewhich in today's usual meanings of the terms astrologer and astronomer would be identified asboth an astronomer and an astrologer. One of the differences today between people who areclassified as an astrologer or as an astronomer lies in how each interprets celestial events andprocesses which they both are engaged in interpreting for purposes of predicting something whichwill or may happen in the future; another difference concerns which celestial events and processesexist to be interpreted for such a purpose. A common example concerns our earth's moon.Astronomers agree that there are techniques for predicting where the moon will be in the sky in thefuture of a given time, and what phase it will be in, with great accuracy. They also agree that themoon has at least one prominent power of affecting human affairs, namely a still quite mysteriouspower known as gravity or gravitation which, for example, exerts influences on the tides of theoceans which have to be taken into account for various human affairs. Actually, few astronomersor physicists would use the English term power to refer to gravitation. In non-relativisticmechanics, the termforce is commonly used, and this is closely associated with what the termenergy is used to denote. In relativistic mechanics, the situation is more complicated, one hearsabout such things as curvature of space, and the like. In what is often called classical celestialmechanics, Newton's Law of Gravity and Laws of Motion, along with an elaborate mathematicalapparatus, are taken as the basis for predicting future positions and phases of the moon, as well asof the sun and other planets of our solar system, and many other celestial objects, from asteroidsand comets up to constellations and galaxies. Gravitation, non-relativistically and relativisticallyinterpreted, plays a major role in many other kinds of predictions by astronomers besidespositions and phases of celestial objects, from what will happen tomorrow in connection with theenergy output of our sun, energy which is of vital importance in human affairs, to what willhappen tomorrow if you get too near a so-called black hole, and what will happen in the future toour solar system or to our universe as a whole which is even of some importance in connectionwith human affairs of tomorrow inasmuch as it may affect religious and philosophical beliefswhich may in turn influence behavior of human and other kinds of individuals and groups,sometimes on a quite large scale.

U32. Astrologers, on the other hand, seldom pay attention to forces of gravity or curvature ofspace in making their predictions. A common complaint of present -day astronomers, physicists,cosmologists and the like is that astrologers can demonstrate no power of celestial objects andtheir processes which can account for what the astrologers claim are their influences

on terrestrial creatures and their affairs. It is maintained by most physical scientists of today thatgravitation, electromagnetic effects, nuclear forces, and the like, exerted by celestial objects(presumably other than our earth) have never been demonstrated to have the kind of influences onterrestrial affairs that present-day astrologers maintain they have. Astrologers often reply to thisby observing that such influences by powers whose existence is accepted by physical scientistshaven't been shown not to exist, or by observing that there may be or are powers not known to ornot accepted by physical scientists which do have influences on terrestrial affairs of the sort theydeal with. Arguments and disagreements of this sort have gone on since antiquity, and it doesn'tlook like they will be settled soon, or indeed ever. A thesis of the present work has been that in pasttimes, what we now call astronomy and astrology were more interwoven than they customarilyare today, although they still share some basic assumptions, e.g. about predicting future positionsof celestial objects and the like. One consequence of this thesis, if it be accepted, is that what hashappened in the development of astral prediction over time is a kind of specialization in connectionwith astral prediction, an effect which has been dominant in connection with all kinds of humanaffairs. Another consequence is that one may expect to see a kind of punctuated evolution inconnection with astral prediction, rather than some kind of revolution in such matters. This hasbearing on a familiar theme in history and philosophy of science, that of so-called scientificrevolutions, and especially alleged "incommensurability" between theories and interpretationsaccepted in different eras, to use the term made popular by Thomas Kuhn. If by"incommensurability", one means existence of basic differences of the sort common to present-day astronomers and astrologers, one can empirically verify that such incommensurability exists.If by "incommensurability", one means that the nature of what is true about our universe betweenwhat present-day astronomers and astrologers hold can't be decided, one can empirically verifythat it hasn't yet been decided. But, as I said near the beginning of this work, I won't be concernedhere with matters of truth and falsity of what astronomers and astrologers say. I have reviewedhere something about the relationship of past and present astronomy and astrology, and theirpractitioners and customers, in order to make a setting for the next chapter in the book by AlanScott, Origen and the Life of the Stars (1991) which I have been considering, and I will nowreturn to it, and in particular to Chapter 6, "The Heavenly Powers".

U33. Nowadays, to maintain seriously that what philosophers sometimes call the "mind-body" problem is closely related to problems of the nature and powers of celestial bodies would, atleast in academic settings, be considered to be a kind of crackpottery. However, Scott observesthat in the Hellenistic era, theories of "astral bodies" served to make a relationship of this kind.Scott says: "...the existence of a substance which literally was on the boundary between theincorporeal noetic realm of God and the corporeal world of becoming helped explain how it waspossible for the incorporeal soul to be joined to the corporeal body. The stars became a model forhow humanity's divine rationality was related to the irrationality of the sublunary world. Thebelief began slowly to evolve that the soul was joined to the gody through the medium of an'astral body'. ... Plato had written that corporeal vision occurs as a result of a fine, smooth, non-destructive fire which is emitted from the eye and combines with light, which is akin to it,forming a bond between the soul and that which is see, Light then is the medium between souland the world. ... The later Platonic astral body theory suggests that the star which in thePhaedrus myth [presented by Plato in his dialogue of that name] acts as the soul's vehicle(schema) is in fact a reference to the luminous body which joins the soul and the physical body.

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224 Scott , p . 77, 78 , 79.

The gap between mind and matter is bridged by positing a body of pneuma or light which issomehow related to both, just as physical vision unites the mind to the world. ... Only afterOrigen, in the tradition of interpretation which begins with Porphyry and his student Iamblichus,does Platonism begin to clarify the precise nature of the astral body both in heaven and existing asthe vehicle for the human soul. At this later point, the astral soul becomes a tenet in systematic,neo-Platonic philosophy. But in Origen's day, the concept of the soul's astral vehicle was still anintellectual experiment which could be developed in several different ways."539

U34. Scott goes on to discuss the relationship of such theories of union between the divineand the human by way of the stars to astrology as it was generally practiced and theorized aboutin the Hellenistic era. He says (p. 79): "A particularly important development in this experiment isthe theory of a planetary component in the structure of the soul. The growth of interest inastrology in the Hellenistic era led to a special emphasis on the influence of the planets on thesoul, since astrology is very much concerned with the effects of the various planetary positions onall generation." There was considerable discussion and disagreement among philosophers andtheologians who accepted some version of an astral body theory as to whether or not, or in whatcases and to what extent, the influences of the planets (including the sun and moon) on humanswas benevolent or malevolent, good or evil. Nowadays, some of the terms for various schools ofthought on these issues are gnosticism, hermeticism (as put forth in the Corpus hermeticum), neo-Platonism or just Platonism, and Mithraism (which Scott describes as a cross between Platonismand astrology, p. 109).

U35. And now, finally, we come to Origen, Scott's destination. On p. xvi of hisintroduction, Scott had said: "The final part [of this book] will investigate astronomy andastrology, and the ambitious use he made of the concept of living heavenly bodies in his theology.Specifically, attention will be given to the importance of the stars in understanding Origen'scosmology, theodicy, doctrine of the Fall, and eschatology." At this point we pass from so-calledpagan or Jewish philosophers of the Hellenistic period to an early Christian philosopher ortheologian, one of the acknowledged Fathers of the Church. Origen lived 186-232 A.D., and isthus one of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, i.e. before promulgation in 325 A.D. of the Nicene Creedwhich affirmed that Jesus Christ is of the same substance as God, and not, as Arius had claimed,unbegotten and an inferior deity to God. Origen is known for having attempted to integrate somemain doctrines of pagan philosophy, especially as derived from works of Plato and his developers,with Christian doctrines based on the Holy Scriptures. In particular, in connection with astralworship, he affirmed numerous times, in various forms, that the stars are alive and rational, basedon the fact that they move, and in an orderly manner. On the other hand, he emphasized that thestars were created, and thus not divine in the way God is, who is uncreated. Some stars aredescribed as having "fallen", in a theological sense, because they had sinned. Thus they were,unlike God, capable of sin. The stars thus were considered by Origen to be ontologicallysomewhere between God and man. However, he denied that the stars were causes of good or evilin human affairs, although he stated that they were causes of the seasons (see below). Scott says:"Origen is familiar with the tradition which makes the heavenly bodies wrongdoers, and stronglyopposes it. ... The Gospel of Matthew itself links the moon with the demonic possession thatcauses epilepsy (17:15), but Origen, citing this passage, goes to great lengths to show that this isnot in fact due to the heavenly body but to the cunning of demons

who observe the movements of the moon and also of the stars and plan their own evil deedsaccordingly ... Origen thus denies the important contemporary belief that the planets or stars weremalevolent. As part of the divine creation their nature is good." On the other hand, Origenbelieved that "There is a proper use for the signs of the heavens, and that is to refer to them inorder to keep track of the change of seasons. In response to Celsus [a pagan philosopher], Origendefended the Stoic idea that the whole universe had been made for the benefit of humanity, and hethought that this was also true for the physical heavens. Along with earth, sea, winds, and rain, sotoo heaven, sun, moon, and stars were given by God to serve mankind. Like most of his pagancontemporaries, Origen assumed that the association of different stars in the sky with differentseasons meant that the stars caysed the seasons and the changes in the weather that they brought.This also meant that the heavenly bodies produce all of the fruits of the earth for the human raceto enjoy. Thus the stars had a central role in daily human affairs, though only in regulating thenatural world and not in our moral and spiritual life."

U36. Origen was, however, opposed to the viewpoints of astro logers, which he took toinvolve denial of free will. Scott says, in agreement with what I presented in Chapter 1 of thiswork: "Astronomy and astrology are of course sharply distinguished in modern thought, but inantiquity the two words were used interchangeably. Most experts in one tended to be experts inthe other -- Ptolemy is the classic example. Thus it is not surprising that Origen, who shows aninterest in astronomy, is also familiar with astrology, even though he was strongly opposed to it."(p.119) On the other hand, Scott says: "The stars, however, had too strong a position both incontemporary philosophy and in the popular imagination to play no role whatsoever in shapingthe life below. Connections between the moon and the movements of tides, or between thepositions of the stars and the seasons, had long since been made, and this lent much credibility toastrological claims. The belief that one could foretell the future by studying the heavens wascommon wisdom in Alexandria ... Among both intellectuals and the unlearned, complete disbeliefin astrological theory was scarcely credible in the third century." A middle way was, as had beendone before, to believe that the stars were created to give signs to humanity. "Origen believed,"says Scott, that the stars could act as signs of future events without causing them. HeChristianizes this view, saying that the stars were signs of all that happens, in accordance withGenesis 1:14, 'let them be for signs,' and Jeremiah 10:2 'be not dismayed at the signs of heaven.'This was combined with his conviction that all things in this world were traceable, not to Fate,but to free will or to the dictates of Providence. ... Astrology is the mistaken use of thiscorrelation between heaven and earth; one which (following ! Enoch [of the Aprocrypha] andClement [of Alexandria, another ante-Nicene Father of the Church] is abetted by fallenangels."540.

U37. Scott concludes (p. 167): "The ancient assumption that the stars are living beings hasnow passed away, but just as the sea retains its fascination, even though Poseidon no longerdwells in it, so too the celestial regions without their ancient gods. Kant declared his awe at thestarry heavens above and the moral law within, recognizing in each case that we are in thepresence of something great. The modern age no longer believes that the stars have souls, butastronomical progress has not robbed them of their power. The farthest created things, our ownnearest self, these two remain mysteries to us. Observing both we are indeed on the boundary of

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226 Scott , ibid . , 167 .

5 4 0 Scott , ibid. , p .143- 146 .

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another land."541 One may dispute Scott's statement, or implication, that there are no people anylonger who believe that the stars in some sense are alive and have souls, with "souls" definedsuitably, although this is not so in the standard academies of our present-day world, at least insome regions of the world. Scott is certainly right to say that the farthest created things, or forthat matter some of the nearer ones, too, remain in many ways mysterious, and that our selves,our conscious selves, likewise remain in many ways mysterious to all of us who are sufficientlyopen to mysteries.