I am not attempting to approach this topic from a point of deep research or step by step historical events. I am simply offering a more generalized mental and visual personal view. For me that approach to picturing how this wonderful language of astrology came into being is something as follows:
Picture Primitive man. He lacked physical strength, protective coloring, great speed, or natural lethal weaponry. He was forced into UNDERSTANDING the situation he was in, in order to survive. He had to heighten his awareness of himself and his environment in order to exist.
His main tool was COMMUNICATION. Group communication and organization, including hand signals and speech helped him in the hunt, and also led to descriptions of the hunt. This led to VERBAL TRADITION. Successive generations benefited from mistakes and innovations of previous generations. This extension of consciousness made obsolete his relationship to TIME AS PURE PRESENT and introduced the concept of the PASSING OF OR FLOW OF TIME. Instead of, like the animals, thinking from meal to meal, he started THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW.
The concept of tomorrow led to CON – SIDER- ING when to hunt, gather, and migrate. Let’s examine the word ‘considerations’ because that is what we do when we read charts. We consider. And if we don’t we had better get out of the biz. Consideration means, literally ‘to be with the act of the stars’. The prefix, ‘con’ = ‘with’; ‘sider’ = ‘stars’ the prefix ‘ion’ = the act of’
It is relatively easy to see how awareness of time in a linear sense led to the realization that the Sun always returned, led to a knowledge of seasons, in that the Sun was higher or lower in the sky during the day, or the Moon at night. Before too long living and working in groups led to awareness and utilization of cycles in group living – the spacing and sequence of survival tasks – as life became a bit civilized.
Nomadic migrations throughout the year in search of game and other food gave way to more stable agrarian communities in the Middle East about 9000 BC. By this time tribes had diversified and become more structured so that certain families performed certain duties within the whole tribe. This specialization mirrored the increasing complexity and need for planning within the tribe. One critical activity was observing and recording heavenly movements. The Greek historian Solon recorded that astronomical observations and calculations were made 9,000 years before his time. That would be 11,000 years ago.
Agrarian tribes used the cycles of the Moon as well as the Sun. Solar cycles were useful for measuring time during the day, seasons during the year and ages in a lifetime. The Moon was used for cycles of planting, mating, predicting rise and fall of rivers and planning festivals. The Sun was the god of vitality and strength. The Moon was the goddess of procreativity and destruction.
It wasn’t long before man was noticing and recording the movements of the visible planets. Planets comes from the Greek work “planetes” meaning wanderers. As comprehension of the other visible planets ensued, the pantheon of gods enlarged and diversified. Man, in his then current state of consciousness, believed that these gods were to be appeased and sacrificed to, but also believed the gods were within them at the same time. The identification was total and undifferentiated. The earliest kings of Babylon, Chaldea and Egypt not only represented the Sun God, but were the Sun God in flesh. Events occurring during the reign of a king were applicable to the entire nation. It was critical to properly plan festivals in accordance with the correct astronomical configurations. Failures in functioning of the kingdoms were seen as the effects of inaccurate timing. Since timing of the rituals and other important events was the responsibility of the priestly caste, this caste attained great power and control of the populations and even kings. But since the people and king benefited from correct management the delegation of power to the priests was accepted.
The establishment of the calendar and the origin of astrology in a formal sense were probably simultaneous. This coincided with the identification of the belt of fixed stars that formed the background, in front of which the Sun, Moon and planets moved; This background set of stars was the ZODIAC. “Zodiac” comes from the Latin word “zodiacus”, which in its turn comes from the Greek “zodiakos kuklos” meaning “circle of animals”. The “circle of animals” was the celestial way within which the creation of the world was eternally being re-enacted. The first Babylonian calendars were also zodiacs whose images were totem animals which represented the twelve important divisions of the year. The Babylonians also defined the day and night as 24 hours and the circle as containing 360 degrees. In Babylonian calendars the months were simultaneously totem animals, planetary beings and the gods themselves. Men at this time did not see themselves as separate beings. Instead, they were totally integrated with the stars and the gods, and astrology was integral to their identity and the identity of their culture.
We can attempt to trace the path of astrology thru the Egyptian dynasties, where the connections between astrology-astronomy and the life of man were crystallized. The Great Pyramid is a wonderful example. Built approx. 2170 BC it served as a burial chamber of the Pharaoh Cheops. But it also functioned as an astronomical observatory and the entire geometry was based upon astronomical positions and movements. The Egyptian civilization was agrarian and depended upon the flooding of the Nile for its survival. The precise timing of the flooding was the determining factor in the yearly calendar and ritual schedule. The indicator of this time was the rising of the star Sirius with the Sun. Just as the flooding occurred, Sirius rose just before the Sun and could be seen leading the Sun into the day.
Then there was The Greeks, With Ptolemy and his classic work, “Tetrabiblos”, which was a summary of all astrology that had gone before, leading the way,
ASTROLOGY FROM MIDDLE AGES TO PRESENT:
Quickly we move thru the Middle Ages into the Renaissance with Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, all of whom were astrologers to William Lilly in the 1600’s who published “An Introduction to Astrology” which was really the only text on astrology which had virtue until the end of the 19th Century. He was integral in transferring the source of astronomical information from observation to the tables of almanacs. Lilly’s almanacs created quite a stir, particularly when he predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666 so accurately that he was brought into court and charged with complicity. He also correctly prognosticated the beheading of King Charles 1.
But astrology really lay dormant until the foundation of the Theosophical Society by Helena Blavatsky in the late 19th Century. The foremost astrologer of the Society was Alan Leo who has been described as the Father of Modern Astrology. As astrology started to awaken it also became tied in with psychology. Jung studied and used astrology throughout his life. We have been passing thru a period of Humanistic astrology with Dane Rudyhar being at the forefront of that movement.
Starting with Michael Gauquelin in the 1950’s came the beginning of research of astrology in the scientific community. As he wrote in his book “Written in the Stars” from 1988 Gauquelin describes how astrology in the 1940s was marked by: “A double void. First of all, an experimental void: apart from a few brief attempts, no-one had ventured to bring together a sufficiently large number of births, or carry out systemic investigations to test the great astrological laws. But a further absence [the second void] was perhaps even more cruel, that of a truly scientific method capable of guiding the researcher through the stumbling blocks that this type of research scatters in his path. In the fifties, I became attached to the idea of filling this double (experimental and methodological) void.” Many of the time-honored mechanisms of astrology seem to offer explanations or avenues of approach to problems which the strictly scientific approach does not. For example, Gauquelin’s work, which some have found to hold biases, worked best for the planets and for houses. It found no relevance tied to Signs. And with the houses, it really only found relevance where the planets were found at the angles, primarily the Ascendent and Midheavan. I also find it interesting that, as you look at and listen to the various astrologers and positions espoused by same, the area with the least difference within different systems is with what the planets symbolize. The planets and the aspects between them seem quite consistent within systems. You do find lack of agreement and consistency as you move to the “modern” non-visible planets. With houses, you also find general agreement with where specifically to place the angles, at least the AC/DC. Of course the horizon is the horizon! There is divergence with the variance between MC/IC vs. 10th/4th house cusps (for example the use of equal houses verses other house systems). The location of the interior house cusps, on the other hand, are areas where many different approaches are used creating variable locations for those house cusps. Each house system creates different interior cusps.
In the end it is basically very difficult to fit astrology into the clothes of natural science. As of now, astrology remains unproveable using scientific standards although each and every astrologer accumulates anecdotal evidence that continues to work for them. I have personally experienced that “shiver of truth” more times than I can count when working with clients via various repeating aspect patterns, planet house locations, and timing repetitions, etc., some of which will be discussed within these pages. Quoting the Hubers, who were wonderful European psychological astrologers, “Like psychology, astrology today suffers under the pressures for proof established by natural science and is lured to mechanical methods which are unfit for grasping human nature. That a humane science should be tested with the rules of a natural science is a contradiction and cannot succeed. Astrology must prove itself by what it is able to accomplish on its own terms.”
So, yes, the issues of “proving” astrology within the scientific construct have been being batted around for a while. My take is as follows: Mainly I would simply say that astrology was never meant to be handled on the level of science and scientific method. Possibly the best way to put a handle on it would be to refer to Ken Wilber work. This would describe the world as an interlinking set of levels of experience. Using the approach found in Wilber’s work, I would place astrology as having evolved out of either/both the level of Magic (animistic) the time of Power Gods and the level of Myth, the level of life and existence where life has meaning, direction, and purpose, with outcomes determined by an all-powerful Other or Order. These are what Wilber calls pre-modern cultures. The Scientific-Rational world came later and is the beginning of the modern times and rational thinking. Astrology resonates even less than psychology at the scientific-rational level. The overriding purpose/need at each level is to be able to incorporate the previous levels in order to “grow” towards consciousness. However, many times there are directly conflicting elements at successive levels. It is a bit like working out the polarity of an opposition in the chart. Here is a specific Wilber quote: Wilber: “But astrology is one of the numerous valid worldviews available at the mythic level of consciousness, and it accomplishes what it is supposed to accomplish at that level – provide meaning, a sense of connection to the cosmos, and a role for the self in the vastness of the universe. It is not, however, a rational chakra-4 science with predictive power (which is why it has consistently failed empirical tests). For the same reasons we needn’t give much credence to what rational science has to say about chakras 5, 6 or 7.” ( pg. 174 n5).
It is an exciting time for astrology. Interest is growing, books abound. Starting with the new millennium, questions of licensing and struggles for and against astrology and how to bring astrology along became similar to the trials and tribulations that occurred early in the history of psychology. Astrology started moving forward in time with exciting new studies regarding eclipses by Bernadette Brady, as well as the Gauquelin sectors, and backward in time with the wonderful Project Hindsight that involved translation of the old Greek, Latin and Hebrew texts. Of course, there also began the more detailed study of smaller heavenly objects, and even non-existent ones. Simply said, for me the good old set of symbols cover the ground just fine but I am becoming one of the ancients, so please do keep your minds open to all possibilities. But, also, please ground yourself in the basics which will work to tether you to the earth so to speak.
One final thought on all of this: We have to not let others tell us that astrology is based on the concept of causality. The planets DO NOT cause, nor do the signs. It is a symbolic language. At the one side of astrology furthest from the contemporary and uber-contemporary astrologers are the traditionalists who will not even consider the use of the transpersonal planets. One of the powers of attraction with “traditional” astrology and some of its adherents who grab tenaciously to it IN LIEU of contemporary is that it has a background of systemology based on non-scientific/rational factors. I have issues with the traditional astrologers that throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to utilization of the valuable material that is available within the contemporary field. Also, I find value in utilizing Uranus, Neptune & Pluto. Traditionalists have their point, in my view, when it comes to some of the far afield theoretical points and asteroids but who knows?? To each his own.