Astrology

To a moderm astronomer, astrology is anathema. The idea that there

can be any direct connection between the configuration or
appearance of distant heavenly bodies in the sky and current or
future events in the terrestrial world flies in the face of laws of physics
that have been established beyond question over many centuries.
This is not to deny that in a few cases an astrological relationship
might actually have a physical basis: some claim, for example, that a
correlation can exist between the growth of plants and the phase of
the moon, because the level of moisture in the soil is related to the
lunar phase through a tidal effect.

From the perspective of the archaeologist or anthropologist, whose

ultimate interest is in human behavior rather than the laws of the
universe, whether such an argument is scientifically verifiable or not
is not the point. What interests these scientists is the fact that people
throughout the ages have drawn direct connections between the
appearance of the sky and events on earth, and that this forms an
integral part of their understanding of how the world works. Even in
the modern Western world, popular astrology represents a
widespread perception of how celestial events influence terrestrial
ones and challenges the “institutional” view represented by scientific
astronomy. Modern astronomers may dismiss astrology as nonsense,
but the direct associations it presupposes between celestial and
terrestrial events may well be far closer to the ways people
throughout history have managed to make sense of the world than
the explanations provided by modern science.

Outside the Western scientific tradition there is no meaningful

distinction between astronomy and astrology; indeed,
archaeoastronomy might equally well be named archaeoastrology.
Modern indigenous worldviews (cosmologies) commonly feature the
idea that good fortune on earth depends upon keeping human action
in harmony with what is happening in the skies, and there is every
reason to assume that this has been true since early prehistory.

The belief that what is seen in the sky may foreshadow the future—
typically stemming, as for the ancient Greeks, from a belief that it can
indicate the intentions of the gods—underlies celestial divination: the
use of observations of sky phenomena to predict future earthly
events. Such a belief is very widespread in human history. Unique,
unexpected, and imposing events such as solar and lunar eclipses
were widely seen as portents of disaster. But more regular celestial
events also indicated auspicious or inauspicious times for planting
crops, having children, going to war, and so on. In city-state or
empire, astronomers and astrologers were employed to identify good
and bad omens for the benefit of their nations and their rulers. This
happened in ancient Babylonia, China, Greece, and Rome, as well as
in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Observation was followed by
prognosis (interpretation) and then by action (prescription). A good
example of celestial divination is found in the early Chinese artifacts
known as oracle bones. Oracle bone inscriptions (a subset of which
relate to astronomical observations) followed a prescribed format: a
preface describing the action taken by the diviner was followed by the
resulting prognostication and then by a verification describing what
actually came to pass.

Predictability did not necessarily detract from the divinatory power of

a celestial event. The motions of the five visible planets are regular
and predictable, though quite complex. Planetary astrology, which
can assign divinatory significance to the cycles of appearance of
particular planets as well as to their positions with respect to the
background stars and constellations and even to one another,
extends back to Babylonian times. The Maya went to extraordinary
lengths to reduce the workings of the cosmos to a series of
interacting regular cycles. The Dresden Codex—a surviving almanac
containingtabulations of the cycles of appearance of the moon, Venus
and possibly Mars, and even of lunar eclipses—seems to have been
an attempt tomake the various motions of the heavenly bodies
predictable. In doing so,the Maya reached a remarkable level of
mathematical sophistication, yet their ultimate motive seems to have
remained divinatory. For the ancient Chinese, on the other hand,
predicting celestial events through systematic observations and
recording fell within the domain of calendrics. This discipline acted
almost independently of, and in some senses in competition with
astrology. Here, once lunar eclipses began to become predictable
around the year 0, they lost their divinatory significance.

The idea that people’s lives can be permanently influenced by the

celestial— and particularly the planetary—configurations at the
moment of their birth is one of the defining characteristics of modern
astrology, and also one that modern scientists find particularly
indigestible. (It should be said that planetary birth charts go far
beyond, and are considerably more complex than, the popular
perception of horoscopes based solely upon the sun’s position within
the zodiac at birth [“birth sign”].) Planetary birth charts have their
origins in ancient Babylonia and reached an apex in Greece and
Rome. When astrologers began to generate horoscopes, this
fundamentally altered their role. Instead of observing the skies and
waiting for calamitous astronomical events, they were now required
to work out planetary configurations at specified moments in the past,
something that demanded considerable technical skill. Given the
particularity of the idea of the planetary birth chart as against the
myriad ways one might envision the influence of the celestial bodies
on human lives, it is surprising that the practice has proved so
persistent.
Insofar as it maintains that a person’s destiny is determined or
influenced by the configuration of the heavens at the time of their
birth, horoscopic astrology is actually a form of divination. It also
introduces awkward issues about free will: if one’s fate is already
sealed, there seems little point in trying to alter it. However, variants
are evident in modern folklore that largely overcome this problem.
Thus in the Baltic states of Lithuania and Latvia, well into the
twentieth century, it was commonly believed among rural
communities that the phase of the moon at birth influenced various
aspects of a person’s character—their propensity to strength or
timidity, cleverness, long life, a joyful or gloomy disposition, and so
on. But such characteristics could be modified throughout life by
choosing, for example, the correct phase of the moon for weaning,
baptism, marriage, or building a house.

The most fundamental connection between objects and events in the

sky and those on earth that we might term astrological relates to the
here and now. Belief in the direct interconnectedness of things is
evident among modern indigenous communities and surely extended
far back into prehistory. Modern examples include the Barasana of
the Colombian Amazon, who understand that the celestial caterpillar
causes the proliferation of earthly caterpillars; the Mursi of Ethiopia,
for whom the flooding of the river they call waar can be determined,
without going down to the banks, by the behavior of the star of the
same name; and those native Hawaiians who still carry on the ancient
practice of planting taro and other crops according to the day of the
month in the traditional calendar (i.e., the phase of the moon). The
extent to which such mental connections might be considered
astrological is arguable, but if our interest is in the practices
themselves, and what was going on in the minds of the people who
practiced them, then the question is largely irrelevant—as irrelevant
as the question of which practices might have a rational basis in
modern scientific terms. What one might choose to term science and
what one might choose to term astrology are both rather subjective in
the context of an alternative rationality, and the distinction between
them is certainly meaningless.

Bibliography:
Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth.
Clive Ruggles. ABC-CLIO. Santa Barbara, California. 2005. pgs. 24-27.