Talk:History of astrology

Major overhaul and snipped text

I've given the article a substantial overhaul. There were two sections in the article that were unreferenced and I'm not sure they add anything of value as separate sections. I'm placing the text here for review and so some of the points can be returned to the other sections with references to support the comments.

Noted predictions

See also: Mundane astrology, Horary astrology, and Electional astrology

A favourite topic of astrologers is the end of the world. As early as 1186 the Earth had escaped one threatened cataclysm of the astrologers. This did not prevent Stöffler from predicting a universal deluge for the year 1524 – a year, as it turned out, distinguished for drought. His aspect of the heavens told him that in that year three planets would meet in the aqueous sign of Pisces. President Aurial, at Toulouse, built himself a Noah's ark – a curious realization, in fact, of Chaucer's merry invention in the Miller's Tale.

The most famous predictions about European and world affairs were made by the French astrologer Nostradamus (1503–66). (Derek and Julia Parker, Ibid, p201, 1990). Nostradamus became famous after the publication in 1555 of his work Centuries, which was a series of prophecies in cryptic verse. So obscure are the predictions that they have been interpreted as relating to a great variety of events since, including the French and English Revolutions, and the Second World War. In 1556 Nostradamus was summoned to the French court by Catherine de' Medici and commissioned to draw up the horoscope of the royal children. Although Nostradamus later fell out of favour with many in the court and was accused of witchcraft, Catherine continued to support him and patronized him until his death.

Historical figures

Throughout history astrologers have made their mark, including such figures as Ptolemy, Albumasur, Tsou Yen and Nostradamus.

Proponents

The influence of the Medici made astrologers popular in France.

Richelieu, on whose council was Jacques Gaffarel (1601–81), a noted astrologer and Kabbalist, did not despise astrology as an engine of government.

At the birth of Louis XIV a certain Morin de Villefranche was placed behind a curtain to cast the nativity of the future autocrat. A generation back the astrologer would not have been hidden behind a curtain, but would have taken precedence over the doctor. La Bruyère did not dispute this, "for there are perplexing facts affirmed by grave men who were eye-witnesses."

In England William Lilly and Robert Fludd were influential. The latter gives elaborate rules for the detection of a thief, and tells us that he has had personal experience of their efficacy. "If the lord of the sixth house is found in the second house, or in company with the lord of the second house, the thief is one of the family. If Mercury is in the sign of the Scorpion he will be bald, &c."

Francis Bacon abuses the astrologers of his day no less than the alchemists, but he does so because he envisions a reformed astrology and a reformed alchemy.

Sir Thomas Browne, while he denied the capacity of the astrologers of his day, did not dispute the reality of the science. The idea of the souls of men passing at death to the stars, the blessedness of their particular sphere being assigned them according to their deserts (the metempsychosis of J. Reynaud), may be regarded as a survival of religious astrology, which, even as late as Descartes's day, assigned to the angels the task of moving the planets and the stars.

Joseph de Maistre believed in comets as messengers of divine justice, and in animated planets, and declared that divination by astrology is not an absolutely chimerical science.

Kepler was cautious in his opinion; he spoke of astronomy as the wise mother, and astrology as the foolish daughter, but he added that the existence of the daughter was necessary to the life of the mother. He may have meant by this that the "foolish" work of astrology paid for the serious work of astronomy — as, at the time, the main motivation to fund advancements in astronomy was the desire for better, more accurate astrological predictions.

Opponents

Some distinguished men who ran counter to their age in denying stellar influences are Panaetius, Augustine, Martianus Capella (the precursor of Copernicus), Cicero, Favorinus, Sextus Empiricus, Juvenal, and in a later age Savonarola and Pico della Mirandola, and La Fontaine, a contemporary of the neutral La Bruyère.

20th Century section

Indef-blocked
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This section is rather problematic with the last two paragraphs being completely unsourced. It is also too focused on the United States, and in this general article about the history of astrology we need a global perspective. I would propose to delete the last two paragraphs, and try to add something about 20th century astrology in Europe and Asia. MakeSense64 (talk) 05:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC) Hello MakeSense, I am going to be your Enfant Terrible. You should reference this back to Zak: 20th century astrology starts with Alan Leo in London. Who was not an author at all, but ran a publishing outfit which employed astrologers who actually wrote the books Leo published under his own name. After his death in 1917 there was a split. Charles Carter got the Theosophical section, while Leo's widow, Bessie, got everything else. She took up with the young Vivian Robson, who became Leo's successor as editor of Modern Astrology. This continued up until the moment Jiddu Krishnamurti renounced the Order of the Star in the summer of 1929. As a result, Robson found himself out of a job. He died January 1, 1942, at the age of 52, if memory serves. Carter continued at the Theosophical Society. He died in 1968. After Leo and Sepharial, Carter and Robson are major figures in 20th century English astrology. Carter was succeeded by John Addey, who invented Harmonics. Which, if it doesn't have a Wiki page, it should. Here in the States, Evangeline Adams - as Wiki notes - was a central figure, up until her death in 1932. After that, we have the rising Dane Rudhyar writing in Paul Clancy's American Astrology, along with Carl Payne Tobey, Grant Lewi and others. While this was going on, an assistant to Cheiro, R.H. Naylor, single-handedly invented the daily horoscope, in the mid-1930's. Or, according to Kim Farnell (Flirting with the Zodiac, Wessex Astrologer, about ten years ago) revived an earlier form. The existing Astro History article mentions this vaguely, you will get a lot more from the (comparatively excellent) R.H. Naylor Wiki page. From the '50's through the '80's it seems there was much interest in astrology from major New York publishers, as a result there were a lot of books of little value that went in and out of print rapidly, or so it seems to me (I've been in the astro-book trade since 1986). Among the authors, William Tucker, Edward Lyndoe, Sydney Omarr, and Linda Goodman. By the late 1960's a new generation of astrologers were coming to the fore, among them Alan Oken and the Parkers. So far as astrology books are concerned, the best books are currently self-published, along with some of the worst. Self-publishing is a mixed bag. The reason is that major publishers no longer publish serious astrology books. There are significant specialty publishers in this area, but I doubt a survey would find them of interest. Rudhyar, who had fallen out of favor in the late 1940's, made a comeback in the late 1970's, at the very end of his life. He had a book published by Random House, on Sabians (Wiki should have a page on the Sabian Symbols), and was a favorite of Henry Weingarten and Barbara Somerfield, who published many of his last books. Rudhyar, who was influenced by Alice Bailey, virtually invented "humanistic astrology" and had a huge influence on mid to late 20th century astrology. Rudhyar is for mysterious reasons associated with Marc Edmund Jones, a one-time preacher/early Hollywood screenwriter who, by the early 1920's had turned astrologer. He had a "nuts and bolts" astrology (as it was once described to me). He notably invented the Sabian Symbols, in San Diego in 1925. Aside from numerous astrology books, he also founded the quasi-religious Sabian Society, which he said was based on ancient Egyptian doctrine. The Society still exists, but is fading. Another Egyptian-inspired astrologer was Elbert Benjamine, who wrote under the name of CC Zain (it is not "C.C."), and who founded the Church of Light. Which for many years was in Los Angeles, but which moved to Albuquerque a few years ago. Benjamine died in 1951. The late Doris Chase Doane was his outstanding pupil, who later became the president of the AFA (see below). Efforts at organizing astrology proceeded through the century. Carter had his own group in London. He and Margaret Hone founded the Faculty for Astrological Studies, which is, today, the leading astrology school in the UK. Here in America, the efforts of George McCormack, and Ernest and Catherine Grant resulted in the founding of the American Federation of Astrologers in 1938, in Washington, DC. It was moved to its present home in Tempe, AZ, in the early 1970's by its long-time director, the late Robert Cooper. He was a retired union organizer from Florida and was a bit heavy-handed. As a result, in the early 1980's a number of smaller groups split from the AFA. Among them are the National Council for Geocosmic Research (NCGR), The International Society for Astrological Research (ISAR), and The Association for Astrological Networking (AFAN). NCGR, ISAR and AFAN sponsor the leading astrolgoical conference, UAC, or United Astrology Conference. The most recent one was held in New Orleans in May, 2012. The next one will be in 2016. As an aside, back in the late 1980's AFAN developed considerable legal muscle in eliminating anti-astrology ordinances in the US. I caution that terming astrology a "pseudoscience" may attract their attention, which Wiki will not want. The AFA began publishing books in the late 1940's. Robert Cooper greatly expanded the AFA's publishing. The AFA currently has several hundred books in print. (Judging strictly by their ISBN numbers, they have published well over 600 titles.) So far as titles are concerned, the AFA is by far the largest astrology publisher in the world. The 1980's saw the emergence of astro-psychology, led by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas. Greene, an American, eventually founded the Center for Psychological Astrology (CPA) in London, which publishes many books of lecture transcripts. She is associated with Alois Treindl at Astro.com, in Switzerland. As you can see, I am coming to the present day, but there is still more. Charles Carter, for mysterious reasons, found horary astrology to be incomprehensible. Which, given his great intelligence and enthusiasm for the subject, has never been understandable. It might have had something to do with the Vagrancy Act (which goes back to 1597), which prohibited fortunetelling in the UK and which was the basis for the prosecutions of Alan Leo, the second one of which led to his death less than two months later. It was in the early 1970's that Derek Appleby, a self-trained astrologer with a battered old copy of William Lilly's Christian Astrology, braved the Act and successfully revived the study of horary in the UK. This led to Olivia Barclay, Clive Kavan and others publishing a facsimile edition of Christian Astrology in 1985 (Regulus Publishing), which was itself a landmark event. (Sir Kavan is better known for his work as an acoustic engineer.) Barclay then went on to found a very influential school of horary astrology, from which many notable astrologers have graduated, among them, Carol Wiggers, whose edition of Lilly's Christian Astrology is available on-line. Barclay is now deceased. A man in Japan is now in charge of her school, which I believe has faded. Interest in old astrology inspired Robert Zoller. He combined his interest in medieval astrology in general and Bonatus in particular to found Hindsight, in 1992, with Robert Schmidt and Robert Hand. Their original goal was the wholesale translation and publication of all major astrological works, from the Greeks, through the Arabs, into the middle ages. Regrettably, after only a couple of years, Hand and Zoller left. Schmidt suppressed the Arabic and Latin tracks and turned Project Hindsight (a page which Wiki has recently deleted) in to an Hellenistic enclave. As you can see from my notes, Wiki's policy of pseudoscience, in-universe and general insularity (sorry I can't give Wiki more credit), has consequences. Schmidt's translations I personally think are poor, but his reception was enormous. It is thanks to Hindsight - and Hindsight alone - that there is currently a huge upsurge in ancient texts throughout the astrological world. James Herschel Holden at the AFA has published numerous translations, among them virtually the entire Astrolgica Gallicia of Jean-Baptiste Morin (who should have his own Wiki page, if he does not already) as well as many early Greek and Roman texts, most recently a new translation of Firmicus Maternus. Professor Benjamin Dykes has published a complete translation of Bonatus (which Robert Hand had hoped to do), as well as translations of many early Arabic texts. I myself, in my guise as the editor of Astrology Classics, have published numerous medieval and ancient texts. I am not dropping names as plugs. I am doing this that Wiki understands just how enormous the current astrological revival is. It has displaced astro-psychology and literally shaken astrology to its roots. Inspired by Hindsight, a group of Seattle astrologers, led by the Nalbandians (who ran a bookstore called Astrology Et Al (also on-line)), founded Kepler College at some point around 2000 (they don't say on their website, and I forget). They were initially a fully accredited academic institution. They originally intended to promote astropsychology, in part as they knew little else. They rapidly broadened their approach, but local opposition resulted in their losing their accreditation at some point in the late 2000's. Many of the top astrologers have taught there. It was named after Johannes Kepler as he was, in fact, an astrologer and contributed much to the study, giving astrology a whole series of aspects that still bear his name. There is also much to report concerning astrological software. Astro-software starts with Neil Michelsen at IBM on Long Island in the mid-1970's. He was the first to program a computer to produce ephemeris routines, which resulted in a published ephemeris that ran from 1400 to 2000, if memory serves. He then relocated Pelham, NY, where he established Astro Computing (ACS), before eventually relocating to San Diego. He died in 1990. He is notable for his development of astrological calculation programs on main-frame computers. Though the 1980's and 1990's, ACS was renown for its chart calculation services, producing tens of thousands of charts, for thousands of practicing astrologers. I mention this as this business fell off sharply in the mid 1990's, due to the widespread use of astro-software on PC's. While he was doing that, Michael Erlewine, of Matrix Software, Big Rapids, MI, was developing software for the early PC. His breakthrough program was Blue*Star, in 1986, the first significant home-based program. Whereupon he abandoned his earlier Apple-based programs, just before the Mac arrived. David Cochrane worked for him briefly before setting up Cosmic Patterns, in Gainesville, FL. These three men were the pioneers in astrology software, there have been many, many, many since. Science and research. The quest to discover a scientific basis for astrology was a goal of many 20th century astrologers. One form this took was the suppression of houses and signs, in favor of aspects and midpoints. Reinhold Ebertin developed this into a powerful method of astrology known as Cosmobiology. The Australian, Geoffrey Dean, picked up on this to write his diatribe, Recent Advances in Natal Astrology, c.1980. There were at least three formal presentations. The first were by George McCormack, from 1947 into the mid 1960's, with astrometeorology. McCormack's work was rejected. The second was by John Nelson at some point in the 1950's. Nelson was an RCA employee whose job was to anticipate radio static. He discovered that planetary aspects determined radio static, enabling him to make nearly perfect predictions of when transmissions would be bad. When he presented his findings before his peers, he was told he was an astrologer and was thrown out. It's worth noting the aspects he discovered and used bore no relationship to the traditional aspects which astrologers used. The third man was Michel Gauquelin. He started out as a skeptic who decided he would make the ultimate refutation. As is so often the case, the more he studied, the more he convinced himself otherwise. He eventually discovered the "Gauquelin effect," of which the "Mars effect" was one. (There were also notable results for Mercury and Jupiter, as memory serves.) His efforts to present his findings generated a huge amount of opposition, which surprised him as well as some of the scientists who examined it. (See sTarbaby, by Dennis Rawlings.) One of the first uses of PC-based astro software was in research, and while there are many astro-research programs as well as databases of tens of thousands of charts (from Lois Rodden, a major data collector) and many years of work expended, there has yet to be any significant results. In this regard, I might contrast mindless computerized number-crunching that produced nothing of note, with Charles Carter's 1954 final edition of An Encyclopaedia of Psychological Astrology (Astrology Classics, 2003), where he gives definitive results. Astrology requires intelligence, which computers, I think, suppress. At the present time, 2012, astrology is undergoing the most intense revival in its entire history. Astrology is transforming itself from the inside out. The books now available outstrip virtually everything of a quarter-century ago. (I am in the trade, I have them on the shelf.) Unlike the 1930's with newspaper astrology, and unlike Alan Leo, this is not at this time a popular movement, but the energy behind it will eventually make itself known. A lot of this history is word-of-mouth. If you're waiting for another Jim Tester (you don't know of him and his book, A History of Western Astrology?), you will wait in vain. Here are some sources. Note they are "in universe" so you will have to get your hands dirty. A History of Horoscopic Astrology, by James H. Holden, AFA. Two editions, the most recent. c. 2009, I regret I don't have a copy this week. An essential reference. Astrological Pioneers of America, by James H. Holden and Robert A. Hughes, AFA, 1988. An excellent source of short bios. Includes significant UK astrologers in the back. You can get sources for most of what I've written from the two Holden books. Which are exhaustively referenced. Also: Flirting With the Zodiac, by Kim Farnell, Wessex Astrologer, 2007. Foreseeing the Future, and, What Evangeline Adams Knew, by Karen Christino, both published by One Reed Publications. 2002 and 2004, respectively. The Astral Tramp, A Biography of Sepharial, by Kim Farnell, Ascella Publications, 1998. For a longer historical sweep, The Fated Sky, Astrology in History, by Benson Bobrick, Simon & Schuster, 2005. Nicholas Campion has written various astro-history books, all of which, in my view, unjustifiably add a religious element to the subject and are flawed as such. Astrology is not now, nor has it ever been, a religion. I suspect Campion is still afraid of the Vagrancy Act. There are numerous secondary books in print at the moment, among them a biography of Al H. Morrison, a minor figure, as well as a history of Belgian astrology in WWII, a translation by the tireless Holden. Such is astrology at the start of the 21st century. It is alive and well. I have only hit highlights. There is a parallel history for 20th century Indian astrology, but I am not the person to write it. Aside from Vedic astrology, there are very few sources for 20th century Asian astrology. Chinese astrology, aside from the animal of the year, has traditionally been the emperor's secret, as is so much of Chinese knowledge. It is only slowly being externalized. So far as European astrology, aside from the English, the Germans (Ebertin and Krafft, both of whom are well-known), and Morin (who was revived), what little is known is inside James H. Holden's head. He frankly surprised me with his book on Belgian astrology. He's in his late 80's. If he hasn't written it, it will die with him. Holden is worth a special mention. He was an early student of Morin, as revived in the 1970's by the mysterious Gerhard Houwing, who went under a variety of names. For decades Holden sat, neglected, making translations of many ancient texts, but without a publisher to print them. It was only the success of Hindsight that gave the AFA the confidence to publish Holden's many translations. While it's Hindsight that gets the credit for the current revival, it's the work of Holden and others like him that is driving it. Dave of Maryland (talk) 17:32, 21 September 2012 (UTC) Sorry, Dave, but the sources listed for all this are all unreliable in-universe sources. Unfortunately, independent real-world scholars mostly ignore modern astology and rarely write anything about it, so it's really hard to find reliable sources for the recent history of the topic. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 18:08, 21 September 2012 (UTC) On the other hand, there's a hell of a lot of knowledge there. Dave,you should write it up for a source other than Wikipedia, don't know what, maybe a popular history magazine. But any outlet that is broader than astrology will want you to address some of the wider implications. Does any of this matter? Have these developments in astrology affected popular cultures? By the way, whatever problems there are in Campion's writing, the notion that you can write about the pre-20th century history of astrology without relating it to religion is barmy. The history of ideas in the West is the history of religion, simple as that, up to mid 19th century at least. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:58, 21 September 2012 (UTC) Astrowiki [[1]] is a good candidate. Agree about Campion. He's written some good peer-reviewed work on the history of astrology. Such a shame that he decided to self-publish his magnum opus instead of subjecting it to peer-review, though. However, he hasn't produced any reliable work on the history of modern astrology. Whether you like him or not, he is one of the major figures in modern astrology. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:10, 21 September 2012 (UTC) Hello you sad people: The only detail in my entire history which is not widely accepted is the linkage of Robson and Krishnamurti, which is my own observation. You should be able to judge independently of academic sources. This "in universe" stuff is your own invention, that you cling to it sounds very much like hysteria. If you have not, yourself, examined the "in universe" sources I cited, you are not qualified to pass judgement on them. Holden's book, for example, has been a standard reference since it was first published 15 years ago. You could turn it inside out and hold it upside down, you would not get it as boiled down as I've made it. So far as the sources I gave, Jim Tester was an accepted academic. His hostility to astrology drips from almost every page, you will love him. And so far as academics go, they haven't yet bothered with the 20th century astrology as a whole. By the time they get to it, the major figures will all be dead (half of them are dead already), their papers and libraries will be scattered and lost, and therefore, as with the 19th century, there will be no history at all. Which is what you want, that astrology "disappears." Presently we are trying to find a home for what's left of Evangeline Adams' papers. PS: AstroWiki is a ghetto. I want no part of it. Dave of Maryland (talk) 21:04, 21 September 2012 (UTC) Sorry, but you're barking up the wrong tree here. You're not even in the right forest. If you wish to contribute to the project, I suggest you thoroughly read and understand our core policies and guidelines: WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE. Further discussion is pointless unless it respects and is framed to conform to those policies and guidelines. Also read WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:15, 21 September 2012 (UTC) Hello Dominus. I understand the core policy only too well: Astrologers are not qualified to speak for themselves, as astrology is a pseudoscience. Astrology is only acceptable if published by known academics. Which, as academics condemned astrology centuries ago, this means that astrology is excluded. I caution, with all great sincerity, that Wiki's pseudoscience attitude, when it was employed by others in the past, has led to loss of livelihood, loss of income, and even loss of life. It's Wiki's pseudoscience policy that needs revision, and I do not flatter myself that it will be changed. You've got to offer something better than "go home and learn your lesson." In making astrology and astrologers outcasts, the rules for deviancy come into play. You do not want that, you do not want to encourage that. Dave of Maryland (talk) 21:26, 21 September 2012 (UTC) Dave of Maryland (talk) 21:23, 21 September 2012 (UTC) You should read up about peer review. We're more than happy to let astrologers speak for themselves, to demonstrate the crazy nonsense they believe in. We just don't treat it like fact. I remember when wiki's skeptical attitude was "was employed by others in the past" and we got a germ theory of disease. All those innocent germs destroyed, all those charlatans losing their income/livelihood. TippyGoomba (talk) 04:46, 22 September 2012 (UTC) I would be saying the same if it was history of teapot collecting. Have a look at WP:HISTRS. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

History of science sidebar

I added the History of Science sidebar since the History of astrology comes under the remit of History of science in three ways.

1. Astrology used to be a science in the days of natural philosophy when it was studied as a science and although it is not a science now, the history of astrology is part of the history of science.
2. Part of the history of science involves pseudoscience and 'its' history, astrology also falls under that.
3. At the top of this very talk page are notices indicating the interest of this article to Wikipedia groups interested in science and history of science.

I therefore suggest that the history of science sidebar 'is' appropriate. Opinions? Neuropsychiatry (talk) 14:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

It's part of the history of science in so far as it's something that was decimated with the birth of science. It was never a natural science or anything like that. TippyGoomba (talk) 03:08, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

For whatever it's worth, here's a quote from Whitman's Astrology: A History, p. 59:

"Ptolemy provides a clear philosophical statement of an astrology firmly anchored in the science of his time. That this science is no longer convincing in modern terms should not blind us to Ptolemy's achievement, which became all the more significant in the age of Islam and Christianity, for had the influence of the stars and planets still been attributed to the pagan deities, it is hard to see how astrology could have survived at all in the post-classical world. Only by shifting the ground of astrology so that it was a matter of natural science, could it merit serious consideration by Christian or Islamic thinkers."

And here's a quote from page 114: "Astrology was part of the system of medieval sciences, and as such it interacted with other fields of learning."

And one more from pp. 180-81: "The boundaries between occult science and natural science in the years 1550-1770 are by no means easy to understand, for it is well known that, while the foundations of modern science were being laid, many of the leading thinkers retained a strong interest and belief in the occult, including astrology."

--Other Choices (talk) 03:44, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Edit by Other Choices

Other choices is attempting to insert text which deigns to give astrology the appearance of respectability. The source being used is not an academic publication, nor by an academic. The text also includes plagiarism. The publisher, Simon & Schuster, publish amongst other things new age material, self help books and spiritual material, stuff published under them is not automatically reliable for these claims and it also makes claims that are demonstrably false (e.g Kepler College was never accredited), nor do any of these mainstream universities teach astrology, IRWolfie- (talk) 12:24, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Plagiarism- Text copied and pasted highlighted
In recent years, astrology has been making a resurgence in western countries. For the first time since the Renaissance, astrology is beginning to be taught at the university level in western countries, including England, France, Russia, Germany, and the United States. It is estimated that there are around 15,000 full-time and over 200,000 part-time astrologers in the United States.