12/18/2010 History of Astrology - Part 1

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History of Astrology
Learn Witchcraft Part 1

Tracking the history of Astrology is a history lesson in and of itself.

The two are inextricably intertwined. There are a lot of very famous
events, and even more famous people involved in the history of
Astrology.
Magick Actually this shouldn’t be surprising, since Astrology was first used to
foretell the future of tribes, nation
states, and countries, before anyone
thought to use it as a method of
prediction for individuals.
Building Every ancient culture we know of used
Community the stars and the night sky to foretell
what events might c ome. The reasons
for this, while we will never really know
for sure, are easy to understand.

We who live in or near cities have

forgotten just how powerful the night
sky is. The sky has become so polluted
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with light from the cities that we can no
longer see any of the stars.

I can remember less than thirty years

ago as a kid, looking up at the sky from
the yard of my suburban home, and
being able to see the major
Communications constellations at least. Now even they have faded from the glare.

If you get the chanc e to go up into the mountains, or to a secluded

beach, or just out into the middle of nowhere, you will see a sky that
is ablaze with its own light.

From suc h a secluded and isolated place, you can look up into the
night sky, and see the rim of the galaxy, that river of stars in the sky
known as the Milky Way. You will see so many stars that you can’t
even make out the familiar constellations, bec ause you aren’t used to
seeing them so crowded. This is the sky the ancients saw.

This is where the Gods lived.

The History
The roots of modern Astrology go back to the
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Cradle of Civilization, the Fertile Crescent, the
land between the Tigress and Euphrates
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rivers. This land was known as Mesopotamia.
Astrology
Astrology 2010
Evidence indicates that as far back as 4000
Astrology Radio B.C.E. this area had a population called the
Love Astrology Ubaidians. Very little is known about these
Astrology Moon & people, except that early on, a new group
moved in and began intermarrying with them.

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This new group was called Sumerians.
It is the Sumerians who invented
cuneiform, the oldest form of writing
we know of. Their language and
culture took over and dominated that
of the Ubaidians, who preceded them.

Around 2330 B.C.E. a Semitic group

called the Akkadians, lead by Sargon of
Akkad, conquered the Sumerians.
This was the first of several Semitic
empires, and it dominated not only
Mesopotamia, but all the way to the
Mediterranean, and Egypt. The language of the Akkadians was the
direct ancestor of the Assyrian and Babylonian languages, these later
languages were in fac t dialects of Akkadian.

The Akkadian Empire fell around 2218 B.C.E. Somewhere in the early
second Millennium B.C.E. two factions came to power, The Babylonians
who had been culturally dominant for centuries in the south, and the
Assyrians in the north. These two groups co-existed for centuries.
The Assyrians dominated politically, but the Babylonians dominated
culturally. In fact the Assyrians used the Babylonian dialect of
Akkadian, as the offic ial language for their records.

Astrology Incorporated

The earliest Astrological writings date

from the time of Hammurabi, who
unified the area around Babylon
between 1792 – 1750 B.C.E. There
are some writings that refer to the
Akkadian period, and may date as far
back as 2300 B.C.E. Just as with all
the other major cultures, Astrology of
the time centered around the State,
and events or omens that would
predict the future of the kingdom.

For example, a translation of one of

these writings states, “If Venus
appears in the East in the month Airu
and the Great and Small Twins
surround her, all four of them, and she
is dark, then will the King of Elam fall sick and not remain alive.”

There are two collec tions of Omen Lore from this period. The most
extensive is called the Enuma Anu Enlil, which were assembled
sometime in the second millennium B.C.E.

The sec ond work, known as the Venus Tables of Ammizaduga,

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consists of systematic observations of the phases of Venus, combined
with the omens each would signify. These significations were clearly
based on past observations. The general belief is that these tables
date from the reign of Ammizaduga, about 146 years after Hammurabi.

There is some controversy over the dates assigned to the various

documents. The Babylonians attributed an antiquity to themselves
and their observations, much like modern Hindus, that seem impossible
to modern people of the West. In some cases we’re talking hundreds
of thousands, or even millions of years, that the Babylonians claimed
to have made these observations.

It’s important to remember that each of these ancient peoples

thought that the planets were either Gods, or the homes of the Gods.
The Sumerians called The Moon God Nanna, the Sun God was Utu, and
the Goddess of Venus was named Inanna.

As was normal for this period of history, as each new group came to
power, they put their own names to the Gods already there. In most
cases, the Gods were similar enough as to be the same God, just
under another name.

The Assyrians gave the planets the names as follows:

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Sun – Shamash

Moon – Sin

Venus – Ishtar

Mercury - Nebo or Nabu

Mars – Nergal

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Saturn – Ninurta

Jupiter - Marduk

While other cultures identified various stars or constellations with their

Gods, for example the Egyptian God Osiris, was identified with the
constellation we know as Orion, the Mesopotamians seem to have
been the only culture that put an emphasis on the stars and planets
as primary indicators of the Here and the Now. This is probably what
led to the studies that became what we now c all Astrology.

Over the centuries, the Mesopotamian c ulture, especially the

Babylonians, continued observing, and compiling data on celestial
phenomena. Eventually, based on observed recurrence of the cycles
of the planets, they could accurately estimate, within reason, the
position of the planets at any time, past, present, or future.

Claudius Ptolemy recorded that

ac curate and systematic eclipse
rec ords were kept as far back as 747
B.C.E., which continued on to the
Hellenistic period after the conquest of
Alexander the Great. Even modern
sc holarship can’t dispute this claim.

From Astronomy To
Zodiacs
One of the great questions about the
Mesopotamian Astrological
observations is, what system (if any)
of zodiac were they using? The earlier
observations are sidereal placements in
degrees from nearby stars.

19 degrees from the Moon to the

Pleiades;
17 degrees from the Pleiades to Orion;
14 degrees from Orion to Sirius. . .

While these are accurate ways to document where a planet can be

found, it is not a zodiac. A zodiac requires a fixed point from where
measurements are taken. This is called the fiducial point. There is
also normally some number of fixed divisions to a zodiac such as our
twelve signs of the modern zodiac, or the twenty seven lunar
mansions of the Hindu lunar zodiac .

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Bartel L Van der Waerden argued that there were three distinct
phases of Astrology. The first was omen lore as described above.
The sec ond was closely related but also had twelve signs of 30
degrees each.

Close attention was paid to the transits of Jupiter through this zodiac
at about one sign per year. From this came the Chinese practice of
assigning each year to a zodiacal sign, and probably the system of
annual profections of later horoscopic astrology. Van der Waerden
dates this second phase from about 630 to 450 B.C.E.

The third phase of Astrology incorporates the use of horoscopes into

that of the historic ally observed omens. Various ancient sources
mention "Chaldeans" who cast birthcharts for various persons,
including Diogenes Laertius who said that according to Aristotle, a
Chaldean forecast Socrates' death from his birthchart, and that
Euripides' father also had his son's chart read getting a forecast of his
brilliant c areer.

The reference to ‘Chaldeans’ refers to astrologers. This makes it clear

that the art/science in this period was completely associated with late
Babylonians, or Chaldeans.

Several natal charts have been found, written in cuneiform. Most

date to well within the Hellenistic Era, but the oldest was dated by
Abraham Sachs, to April 29, 410 B.C.E. The translation by Cyril Fagan,
follows as:

1. Month (?) Nisan (?) night (?) of (?) the (?) 14th (?). . .
2. son of Shuma-usur, son of Shumaiddina, descendant of Deke was born.
3. At that time the Moon was below the "Horn" of the Scorpion
4. Jupiter in Pisces, Venus
5. in Taurus, Saturn in Cancer.
6. Mars in Gemini, Mercury which had set (for the last time) was
(still) in (visible).
7. . . . etc., etc.
This is a very rough chart, with only sign positions given. The other
cuneiform charts, though much later in origin, are nearly as terse,
though positions given are to a much greater precision. The positions
in the charts correspond more closely to a sidereal zodiac , using the
Fagan-Allen ayanamsha, than to tropical positions.

While these charts are horoscopic in design, they still do not match
the elaborate horosc opic astrology of the later Hellenistic Era. There
is not much concrete information about Astrology after the evolution
of Astrology after the early Babylonian charts. Projec t Hindsight
contains many of these old texts, which point to the birthplace of
Astrology as we know it, in Egypt.

Egyptian Astronomy
This is not the Egypt of the Pharaohs. This is a much later Egypt,
after they had made close contact with the Babylonians, and ideas
had migrated.

The earlier Egypt, that of the Pharaohs, had a great interest in

astronomy. This is evidenced in the alignment of too many buildings
and temples, to be discounted.

Pharaonic astronomy was centered around the stars, and paid little
attention to the planets. The Egyptians aligned their temples to the
stars as a way of bringing about sympathy between terrestrial
structures, and the stars they were associated with.

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The Egyptian obsession with the stars was greater than any other
culture before or since. Pharaonic death rituals inside the Great
Pyramid included strapping a phallus to the sarcophagus of the dead
king, and aligning it with a shaft in the wall.

This shaft ran to the outside of the pyramid, and aligned with the star
they called Isis, so that the dead Pharaoh could, as his last act,
impregnate the Goddess to give birth to the next Pharaoh.

Take a look at a satellite view of the Giza Plateau with the Nile running
beside the pyramids. Then take a picture of the constellation Orion,
with the Milky Way running next to it.

You will find that they are duplicate images, the three Great Pyramids
being the belt. This is an extreme that no other culture ever thought
to go to.

The critical factors which lead to the fusion of Egyptian ideas, and
Babylonian astronomy was one or both of two historical events. The
conquest of Egypt by Persia, and the conquest of both Persia and
Egypt by Alexander the Great.

In both cases, Egypt and Babylon were ruled by the same regime at
the same time. In the case of the Persian Empire, the Persians
became ardent devotees of astrology. This would have assisted the
movement of astrological ideas into Egypt.

The anc ients clearly knew that astrology had something to do with
Babylon, they called Astrologers Chaldeans, but they gave principal
credit to the Egyptians.

Most academics pass this off as being fashionable for the time, with
no historical basis. Ancient writers did in fact attribute astrology to
persons dating as far back as the Pharaohs.

Still, there is no reason to assume that the ancients were not correct
in their association of Egypt with being the primary source of
horoscopic astrology. It just wasn’t as far bac k as they thought.

So what did the Egyptians add to Mesopotamian astrology? Here

things get really messy. There is no way to know for sure. Most
evidence is supposition based on logic from what little we do know.

The use of a rising degree may have been pre-Hellenistic Babylonian.

Hellenistic writers attribute Houses, or signs used as Houses to
Hermes. This would be a referenc e to Hellenistic Egyptian sources.

It is probable that Aspects are Egyptian, but no one can say for sure.
The lots, as well as most of the systems of rulership are almost
certainly Egyptian in origin. Only the exaltations have clear origins in
Mesopotamia.

It is most likely that the entire system of horoscopic astrology was in

place by the first year C.E. It may have been in plac e centuries
earlier, but we don’t know. One of the facts that Project Hindsight
believes they have found, in their studies of the later Greek writers, is
that those Greeks are already dealing with a later era of astrology.

It’s Greek To Me!

One of these writers, Vettius Valens, actually went traveling through
Egypt looking for masters of the old traditions, much like modern
Americans have gone to India to study astrology and various other
sacred teachings.

While most of the Greek writers seemed to have studied from books,
Valens studied with at least a few living teachers of the old traditions.
It is clear from his writings that much of what they taught would
never have been written down but for Valens.

Whatever the original language used to record Egyptian astrological

data earlier, by 1 C.E. it was all in Greek. All the Egyptian texts that
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are referenced in later literature were all written in Greek. Some may
have been Greek translations of earlier Coptic writings, but any such
Coptic texts have long been lost.

The use of Greek for writings is significant. Even though the Persian
Empire was massive, and included many cultures, no single language
came into domination. Persian was most certainly used for official
purposes, but otherwise, the language used, both spoken and written,
depended on the geographic location. Egyptians still spoke Egyptian,
Babylonians still spoke their Akkadian Dialect, and wrote in cuneiform.

When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and Persia, and advanced
as far as India, he brought with him the Greek language, c ulture, and
writing. Greek was not just the language for official purpose, it
became the standard language used for any communication between
ethnic cultures.

Egyptians still spoke Egyptian and wrote Coptic among themselves,

but any communication with another culture would have been done in
Greek. Anyone could travel from Greece in the West, to India in the
East, or Egypt in the south, and been able to communicate effectively
in Greek. Any idea expressed in Greek would have the same range of
travel.

Even after the Persian revivals, the Bactrian people of what is now
Afghanistan and Pakistan continued to have Greek speaking rulers up
into the early centuries of the Common Era. This means that
Babylonian methods, embodied in Egyptian astrology, not to mention
Egyptian methods, could travel to places such as India very easily.

This acc ounts for the fact that all of the technical words in Indian
astrology, whose origins can be found in another language, are Greek.
They are not Babylonian, nor Coptic, nor earlier Egyptian. What is also
interesting is that there appear to be few, if any, technic al words in
Greek astrology that have their origins in any other language.

Love the VooDoo that Hindu

Following is a partial list of some of the terms in Hindu astrology that appear
to have a Greek origin.

Zodiac Signs
Sanskrit Greek English
Kriya Krios Aries
Tavura Tauros Taurus
Jituma Didumoi Gemini
Kulira Karkinos Cancer
Leya Leon Leo
Pathona Parthenos Virgo
Juka Zugos Libra
Kaurpi Skorpios Scorpio
Taukshika Toxotes Sagitarius
Akokera Aigokeres Capricorn
Hridroga Hudrochoos Aquarius
Chettha Ichthues Pisces
Planets
Sanskrit Greek Latin/English
Hemnan Hermes Mercury
Asphujit Aphrodite Venus
Heli Helios Sol/Sun
Ara Aries Mars
Jeeva Zeus Jupiter (Jove)

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Kona Kronos Saturn

All of the above words had equivalents in Sanskrit, which most likely
preceded the introduction of the Greek into India. Following are words
which have no Sanskrit equivalent or roots, and seem to have completely
Greek origins.

House and Aspect Words

Sanskrit Greek English
Hora Hora Hour
Liptaka Lepta Minute
Jamitra Diametros Diameter
Mesurana Mesouranema Midheaven
Menyaiva Meniaios No Equivalent
Trikona Trigonon Trine
Dyuna Dunon Setting
Kendra Kentron Angle
Panaphara Epanaphora Succedent
Apoklima Apoklima Cadent
Drekana Dekanos Decan
Sunapha Sunaphe Applying
Anaphara Anaphora Separating
Dauradhura Doruphoria Doryphory
Kemadruma Kenodromia Void of Course

The extent to which Hindu astrology is based on Hellenistic astrology is

extremely controversial. Many authors of the Hindu School would like to
deny any basis at all, but considering the House and Aspect words, this is
unlikely. There are Westerners who believe that Hindu astrology came
entirely from the West, or more accurately, the Middle East.

There are differences between Hindu and Hellenistic astrology, but that
doesn’t mean that they don’t have the same or similar origin. All that would
be required is a period of isolation after unity, long enough for divergence
so that the Eastern branch could merge with native traditions already in
place. Hindu astrology may not be a principal offshoot of Hellenistic
astrology, though the required period of isolation did occur, which would
allow a single tradition to become two.

After 126 B.C.E. the Parthians (Persians) rose up and re‐conquered most of
the old Persian Empire from the Seleucids, who succeeded Alexander. The
Parthians retook everything of the old Empire except the part nearest the
Mediterranean, and in the northwest of India. They were extremely hostile
to the Greeks, and later, the Romans, cutting off communication between
the Hellenistic peoples in the West, and the Bactrian Greeks in Afghanistan
and Pakistan.

Hindu records from the 4th and 5th centuries C.E. mention
a new Sun Cult, coming from the West. Since Christianity
displaced the worship of Sol Invictus, (The Unconquered
Sun) it may be that Hindu astrology got input from a new
group fleeing Christian persecution in the West.
Whatever ideas Hindu astrology may have gotten from the
West, it is clear that they changed, modified, and adapted
it with their own native traditions.

Modern Astrology – The Birth

The Parthian separations would have had another effect. Persians had
always been enthusiastic astrologers. It seems only logical that they would
have built on what they got from the Mesopotamians and Greeks. When
they were overthrown in 227 C.E. by the Sassanid Persians, they too would

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have continued Persian traditions of astrology.

When the Arabs came, most of the literature of the Zoroastrian Sassanids
was destroyed, including their astrological works. Fortunately we have a
good idea of what their astrology may have looked like. Most of the great
astrologers of the Arab era were Persian. The astrology they taught is very
different from both Hindu and Greek. It had orbs of aspect, the Great Cycles
of Jupiter and Saturn, all of the elaborate systems of planetary interactions
such as Refrenation, Frustration, Abscission of Light, Translation of Light and
so forth.

While the Arab Era astrology has clear roots in Hellenistic astrology, in the
two or three centuries between the last Hellenistic astrologers, and the first
Arab Era astrologers, something new had come into play. This was most
likely the Persian form of astrology. Arab Era astrology is the immediate
ancestor of modern Western astrology of today.

References:

Material for this history was taken primarily from “The History of Astrology –
Another View” By Robert Hand

The Assyrian names for the planets comes from “Historical Astrology In
Egypt”
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