Volume III : Through the Doors of Greece

Alexander the Great was born, history tells us, the son of King Philip II of Macedon. Legend has it, however, that the boy’s real father was a King of Egypt, Nectanebus, among whose accomplishments was the art of summoning immense armies out of thin air. In 356 BC, the planets informed him that his enemies would triumph over him, however efficient his aerial forces, so he packed his bags and made off, heavily disguised, to Macedon, where he set up as an astrologer and ingratiated himself at court. While the king was away, Nectanebus, with the aid of wax dolls and other magical means, transported himself into the queen’s bedroom disguised as the god Ammon, to whose blandishments Olympias naturally felt bound to accede. She became pregnant. When her term came, Nectanebus came to her room and set up at her bedside a tablet made of gold, silver and acacia wood, which stood on a tripod and consisted of three belts — one with Zeus on it, surrounded by the thirty-six decans; then one bearing the twelve signs of the zodiac; and on the innermost the Sun and Moon. To these he fitted eight precious stones showing the positions of the planets. He begged her not to give birth until these were propitious — and when they were, with a flash of lightning and a thump of thunder, Alexander was born. We are not told of King Philip’s reaction on returning to discover the fait accompli; and indeed other accounts suggest that he and the queen merely employed an astrologer to tell the new-born child’s fortune. But of Alexander’s later successes, history tells us at length. Nectanebus is said to have become Alexander’s tutor, using as text-book The Secret of Secrets, a book by Aristotle, later lost. This, among other things, circulated a knowledge of and respect for astrology. It did Nectanebus no good, however, for when the child was 12 years old he tipped the astrologer over a cliff to prove that he could not foretell the time of his own death. But at least it apparently provide tips for the future world general — such as that he should never take a laxative except when the Moon was in Scorpio, Libra or Pisces, and that severe constipation would result were he to be unwise enough to take one while the Moon was in Capricorn. It has always been understood that Alexander made use of astrology throughout his campaigns, though whether because he believed in it, or knew that others believed, and took advantage of the fact, is far from clear. It seems unlikely that he almost alone among educated people of his time placed the influence of the planets at naught — although one or two philosophers did so: Eudoxus (c 408-355 BC), for instance, the inventor of the geometrical theory of proportion, who demanded that ‘no credence should be given to the Chaldeans, who predict and mark out the life of every man according to the day of his nativity’. And the Greek Academy under Carneades and Clitomachus, in the 1st century BC, was to set itself firmly against divination, magic and astrology. But they were in a tiny minority. In general, as the historian Gilbert Murray was to put it, ‘astrology fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new disease falls upon some remote island people’. Through such outposts as Daphnae, a Greek settlement in Egypt between 610 and 560 BC, and especially through the ports of Egypt opened to Greek ships after 640 BC, travelling Chaldean astrologers descended on Greece in considerable numbers, bringing with them the apparently age-old wisdom they had hoarded, which was received warmly by Greeks already better practised in mathematics and astronomy than they. If any evidence was needed of the fact that much astronomical and astrological lore came directly from Babylonia to Greece, we have only to look at the names of the planets. When the Greeks first recognised these, they called them Herald of the Dawn (Venus, noted even by Homer for its brightness, although sometimes it was called Vespertine, as the star of the evening), the Twinkling Star (Mercury), the Fiery Star (Mars), the Luminous Star (Jupiter), and the Brilliant Star (Saturn). But after the 4th century, these names begin to disappear, and others take their place — Aphrodite, Hermes, Ares, Zeus and Cronos. It seems almost certain that the reason is that by then the Chaldeans had arrived with their barbaric names for the planets — Nebo, Ishtar, Nergal, Marduk and Ninib. The Greeks simply substituted their own deities’ names for the foreign ones — so today we call the planets by names that are English renderings of Latin translations of Greek translations of the original Babylonian ones! One of the reasons for astrology’s success in the Greek world may well have been the atmosphere during the period after Alexander’s death, when the ancient ideal of the Greek republic was being replaced by the concept of universal monarchy. Religion was in a sense internationalized, and the worship of the planets and stars as deities became stronger as the cities lost their individual powers and personalities. The planets spread their influences indiscriminately, and such philosophers as Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, believing that nothing was determined by chance (indeed, that there was no such thing as chance) emphasized in the 4th century BC the idea that earthly happenings were rigidly determined by natural laws. What then was more obvious than that the planets, coolly moving in their predetermined courses, were the governors of events? There is also, of course, the Greek expertise at astronomy and mathematics, and ingenuity in constructing machines to match that expertise: Ptolemy describes the construction of an astrolabe, an instrument for measuring the positions of the stars; and a little machine with geared wheels, discovered in the sunken wreck of a vessel of the 1st century BC, seems to have been devised to work out the motions of the planets. If some Greek ideas about the constitution of the solar system were distinctly eccentric (Ptolemy’s not least so) their grasp of mechanics and mathematics was brilliant — much more so than many historians of the 18th century believed. If we can safely ignore Philostratus’ claim (made in the 3rd century AD) that astrology was known and practised in Greece as early as 1184 BC, it is certainly the case that Hesiod, a poet who lived in the 8th century BC, paid attention to the positions of the planets and stars in his Works and Days. In this long poem he suggested among other things that they should be used to predict good times at which to start certain tasks. The Greeks pioneered enormous developments in astronomical theory. Aristotle disproved Anaximander’s theory that the Earth floats freely and without support; Pythagoras was probably the first man to ‘know’ (if without proof) that the world was one of the planets, and round. This theory, first put forward it seems by Philolaus of Thebes at the end of the 5th century BC, was based on intuition rather than on reason, but the guess was an important one. It was clear by this time, too — at least to some astronomers — that the Sun was much larger than the Earth, and therefore probably the latter was not the centre of the universe. And by 230 BC, Aristarchus of Samos, centuries before Copernicus, argued that the Earth and all the planets revolved in circles round the Sun, the Earth turning on its axis once in twenty-four hours. But the time was against him, and only his colleague Seleucus accepted his theory, which otherwise sank like a stone — although Copernicus was heartened, pursuing it in his own age, to find evidence of an ancient conviction of the hypothesis. The Greeks seem to have adopted the zodiac as early as the 6th century BC; it may have been Democritus, round about 420, who popularized it and the idea that the planets influenced man as they travelled through the signs. It is said that he spent much time in Egypt and the east; certainly he visited Persia, and he may have been more decided in advancing his view that the planets governed men’s lives than any Greek before him. He agreed with Zeno that nothing could happen in the world by chance. It has been claimed that he gave the zodiac signs their Greek names, although other historians have suggested that Anaxagoras, born in lonia about 500 BC, may have had a hand in that — he was an adventurous astronomer, the first to explain that the Moon shone because of the reflected light of the Sun. He was thrown out of Athens, where he lived for thirty years, for attempting to rationalize astronomy, and teaching rationalist theories about ‘the things on high’. The Greeks, who sacrificed to the Sun and Moon, were outraged at his suggestion that they were paying court to a ‘fiery star’ and a lump of earth. Many reports of early astronomical/astrological feats by the Greeks must be regarded with suspicion. It has often been suggested, for instance, that Thales predicted a solar eclipse that occurred in 585BC, thus ending a battle between the Lydians and Medes, who stopped fighting in sheer surprise. This seems unlikely. The knowledge simply did not exist by which it could have been done, although it is possible Thales might simply have made a spectacularly successful guess. There is a little more substance, perhaps, in Pliny’s report that Cleostratus of Tenedos observed the zodiacal constellations as they appeared behind Mount Ida towards the end of the 6th century. But it is only on looking at the calendars devised by Eudoxos of Cnidus (c 408-355 BC), a Greek scientist and astronomer, that we definitely find use being made of the Greek zodiac (it was he who, in the Phainomena, divided the ecliptic into twelve equal signs). Between the 5th century BC and the birth of Christ, astrology appealed to various sections of Greek society, among them not only philosophers and scientists, but such men as Hippocrates, the physician and ‘father of medicine’, who taught astrology to his students so that they could discover the ‘critical days’ in an illness. He is said to have remarked that ‘any man who does not understand astrology is a fool rather than a physician’. And the young intelligentsia often took an intense interest in the subject; when Plato visited Dionysus’ school, he saw two pupils arguing with great vigour about the theories of Anaxagoras, illustrating their argument by imitating the sweep of the ecliptic with their arms. Aristophanes in The Clouds ridicules the study of astrology as one of the cults of the Athens upper classes. It was, as might be expected, a Chaldean — Berosus, a priest of Bel Marduk at Babylon — who in about 260 BC came to the island of Cos, where there was a medical school at which Hipparchus had taught, and set up there a formal school of astrology which was perhaps the earliest such establishment. He seems to have used for his textbook a treatise called The Eye of Bel, which existed in the form of seventy tablets in the library of Assurbanipal, but was compiled much earlier, in the 3rd millenium BC, for Sargon I — or so it was said. Berosus also wrote an enormous history of his homeland, Babylonica, covering some five hundred thousand years from the creation of the world to the death of Alexander the Great, setting out in it a considerable amount of astronomical/astrological lore: about the Great Year, for instance, and the theory that earthquakes were caused by planets being in conjunction with the Sun. He also predicted a cataclysmic world disaster when all the planets were in conjunction in Cancer: the earth would become mud during an inordinate flood, and the world would eventually be covered with water, sweeping away all human life. Berosus was famous in his own time, and it is said that Athens raised a statue of him with a golden tongue, to pay tribute to his oratorical skills. He was succeeded on Cos by Antipatrus and Achinapolus, who taught medical astrology, and seem to have been the first non-Babylonian astrologers to experiment with the idea of drawing up a horoscope for the moment of conception rather than birth. They worked a good deal on the ancient aphorism, preserved in Hermetic literature, to the effect that the sign occupied by the Moon at the moment of conception would be in the ascendant at the time of birth. Interestingly Dr Eugen Jonas, a Czechoslovak psychiatrist, did a great deal of work on the same theory in the 1960s, claiming to be able to predict by the tropical position of the Moon at the time of conception the sex of a child, before birth. The Communist government banned his work in 1970, before his full evidence could be published. Dimly, we hear of other visiting Chaldean travellers to Greece: Soudines, for instance, a visitor to the court of Attalus I, King of Pergamum, who compiled lunar tables which were used for centuries, and one of the earliest lapidaries, associating various precious stones with certain planets and signs. By now, many Greeks were quick to adopt the new celestial theory: Epigenes of Byzantium, Apollonius of Myndus and Artemidorus of Parium all boasted of having been instructed by Babylonia priest-astrologers. Kidenas, who probably lived in the second half of the 3rd century BC, seems to have been responsible for some Babylonian astronomical discoveries, and perhaps was a tutor of Berosus himself (though one of the problems is that the dates of many of these early astrologers are extremely uncertain). Then there was Aratus, a contemporary of Berosus, who in about 276 BC versified the Phainomena of Eudoxos, producing a poem which became required reading for generations of Greeks, with its account of the planets, the zodiac and the other constellations, and its concluding advice to meteorologists: Study the Signs together through the year, Then never of the weather shall a guess Make random nonsense, but assured forecast. Innumerable Greek and Roman commentators published their own editions of Aratus. A misty figure with the name Critodemus appears briefly in a list of the founders of the Greek astrological tradition given by Firmicus Maternus a Latin writer of about AD 356, in his De erroribus profanorum religionum, among purely imaginary personages such as Hermes, Orpheus and Nechepso. This kind of thing plagues anyone attempting to trace astrological history. Was Critodemus imaginary too? Or did he indeed construct the horoscopes he is said to have drawn up? There is a treatise ascribed to him, Horasis, from which later astrologers learned: one, Hephaistion, relied utterly on his astrological formula for determining whether a child would be still-born. Gradually, astrological lore was being drawn together into a more or less coherent body of knowledge. This did not mean, however, that it was free of contradictions, or that it developed with any more coherence than other theories about the nature of the universe. In the three centuries before the birth of Christ, splits occurred between astrologers which continue to this day. Perhaps the chief one concerned free will. On school of ‘scientific’ astrologers took a severely empirical view: everything was predetermined, and the movements of the planets were, so to speak, geared to coming events. Another, the ‘catharchic’ school, believed that some things were predetermined, but by no means all. If you studied the planets’ movements sufficiently minutely you could, by seizing a propitious moment bring about success when to act at another might provoke disaster. Free choice meant the right to chose the moment at which to start a project, conceive a child, be born. There was, by now, a very strong association between certain planets and certain terrestrial events and characteristics. The strongest, of course, was between the Sun and life itself. As one astrologer put it: The Sun, which nourishes the seeds of all plants, is the first also to gather from them the first fruits as soon as he rises; for this gathering of his uses his rays, if one may employ the term, like immense hands. What indeed are hands for him but those rays that gather in the first place the suavest emanations of plants? The different quality of sunlight at different times of the day is now a matter of scientific record, here stated with imagery that is specifically Egyptian. Mars is associated by the same ancient astrologer with war, Venus with love, Mercury with speed and messages, and so on. These associations were not only regarded as traditional, but as matters of scientific fact, although the mythical associations between the planets and ancient legend were still preserved, so that Saturn was also Cronos, Jupiter was still Zeus (there is a horoscope dated AD 8, in which Cronos is in the sign of the Bull, Zeus in that of the Crab, Ares (Mars) in that of the Virgin, and so on). The consensus was that two planets, Jupiter and Venus, were on the whole benevolent, and two were antagonistic, with Mercury neutral. The degree of their influence was geared to their position relative to Earth and the Sun, which was in the middle of the planetary family with Mars, Jupiter and Saturn above, and Venus, Mercury and the Moon below. The lower planets were humid, and colder the further they stood from the Sun. Humidity was thought to be a female element, so the upper planets were believed to be masculine, while Venus and the Moon were feminine, with Mercury a hermaphrodite. As the astrological theory grew more complex, so it became more difficult to resolve anomalies and confusions; and as astronomy developed it became difficult always to fit the known facts to the mythical characteristics. The zodiac signs, too, caused some confusion; the Greeks saw Aries, for instance, as a character in the legend of the Golden Fleece, while astrologers who had learned from the Chaldeans had to accept it as the Ram of Ammon. Aries naturally tended to preside over the fortunes of wool merchants; but since the Golden Ram lost its fleece, it also tended to provoke sudden disasters in the wool trade! Despite the fact that there were innumerable difficulties in the way of a practical valuation of the interpretations offered by the astrologers, some people continued to take the subject very seriously indeed — not only the Seleucids, Lagids and Attalids, but smaller states such as Commagene, under King Antiochus I (c 8o BC). A former antagonist of Pompey, then his ally in the civil war, who repelled an attack on Samosata by Mark Antony (and Antony, incidentally, is said to have been spied on by an astrologer employed by Cleopatra), Antiochus is interred in a giant tomb on the summit of Nimrud Dagh, 7000 feet above sea level, covered with carvings in relief which provide a fascinating anthology of astrological beliefs of the time. Here Greek and Iranian gods became one: Mithra is Apollo, Ares is Hercules, Zeus is Oromazdes. On the western terrace outside the tomb is a great relief of a lion covered with stars, and with the Moon and three planets: Jupiter near the head, Mercury in the middle and Mars at the tail — the planets associated with Zeus, Apollo and Hercules. This is believed to be a visual interpretation of a horoscope for 6 July 62 BC — the day on which Antiochus was crowned after his reinstatement by Pompey. As we turn from Greece towards Rome, where astrology really took its place at the very centre of political events, it is to the city of Alexandria that we must look for a sight of the man who drew together all the skeins of astrological thought of his day and did his best to rationalize them in one book. After the death of Alexander, who founded the city, King Ptolemy Soter — Ptolemy 1 (323-285 BC) — had founded a sort of university at Alexandria, at which the scholars of the city could meet to further their studies. Four hundred years later, the most famous astrologer of ancient times, Claudius Ptolemaeus — Ptolemy — arrived to teach there. Ptolemy is of course known chiefly as a mathematician, astronomer and geographer, who despite his conviction that the Earth was the centre of the universe around which all other heavenly bodies revolved, devised an astronomical system that was to be adopted by the whole of Europe for centuries. His Syntaxis made a great point of insisting on simplicity — no point in inventing complex systems to explain a phenomenon when a simple one would do — and on verification of observation. Astoundingly, without the aid of a telescope, he catalogued 1022 separate stars (compared with the 840 or so catalogued by Hipparchus). The Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy’s lengthy astrological textbook, the first really substantial textbook to come down to us complete, is a compilation of the astrological lore of previous centuries, and was written sometime between AD 161 and 139, when he was working in Alexandria. It is in four books, and begins with a rational enough argument: since it is clear that the Sun and Moon have an effect upon terrestrial life (through the seasons, the movements of the tides, and so on), it is surely well to consider the effects the other heavenly bodies may have. Then, in what is admittedly a giant leap, he proposes that since it is clearly practicable, by an accurate knowledge of the points above enumerated, to make predictions concerning the proper quality of the seasons, there also seems no impediment to the formation of similar prognostications concerning the destiny and disposition of every human being, for ... even at the time of any individual’s primary conformation, the general quality of that individual’s temperament may be perceived; and the corporeal shape and mental capacity with which the person will be endowed at birth may be pronounced; as well as the favourable and unfavourable events indicated ... Ptolemy takes what is an extremely realistic view of the subject, despite his obvious partisanship; he admits, for instance, that the science is imperfect, not only because some astrologers are simply bad astrologers, but because there are other influences than astrological ones to be considered. However, since no weakness is imputed to a physician because he enquires into the individual habit of his patient, as well as into the nature of the disease, no imputation can justly attach to the professor of prognostication because he combines the consideration of species, nurture, education and country with that of the motion of the heavens; for as the physician acts but reasonably in thus considering the proper constitution of the sick person as well as his disease, so, in forming predictions, it must surely be justifiably allowable to comprehend in that consideration every other thing connected with the subject, in addition to the motion of the heavens, and to collect and compare with that motion all other co-operating circumstances arising elsewhere. Completing Book One of the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy then begins to summarize the workings not only of the Sun, Moon and planets, but of certain fixed stars, going into technical detail. In Book Two, he sets out to ‘confine the whole doctrine within the limits of natural reason’, delineating two chief areas in which astrology can be of use to man — the general (concerned with entire nations, countries or cities) and the particular (concerning individuals). He relates the dispositions of nations to astrology by pointing out that their people seem to have different temperaments, which can be related to the climate of their countries; such climates being, of course, a matter of the heat of the Sun. The people of the extreme north, for instance, who live ‘under the Bears’, or close to the arctic circle, have their zenith far distant from the Zodiac and the Sun’s heat. Their constitutions, therefore, abound in cold, and are also highly imbued with moisture, which is in itself a most nutritive quality, and in these latitudes is not exhausted by heat; hence, they are fair in complexion, with straight hair, of large bodies and full stature. They are cold in disposition, and wild in manners, owing to the constant cold ... Book Two concludes with a passage on how to interpret eclipses, and on the significance of meteors (which is wholly meteorological). In Book Three, Ptolemy turns to personal astrology. He is clear about the difficulty of obtaining an accurate birth time let alone the possibility of noting down the correct time of conception. Both depended on astronomical observation, using an astrolabe, or on having a water clock (and even these, he says, have been known to be leaky and therefore inaccurate!). He is not manic about the choice to be made between working from the time of conception or of birth; ideally, both should be noted. But after all, the conception may in fact be said to be the generation of mere human seed, but the birth that of man himself, since the infant at its birth acquires numerous qualities which it could not possess while in the womb, which are proper to human nature alone. There are detailed instructions about the interpretation of a birth chart or horoscope, and accounts of just what the good astrologer can expect to be able to discover. The physical appearance is certainly one ingredient. The baby born when Saturn is ‘oriental’ (or in the eastern half of the birth chart) would be of a yellowish complexion and a good constitution, with black and curled hair, a broad and stout chest, eyes of ordinary quality, and a proportionate size of body, the temperament of which is compounded principally of moisture and cold. Should he [Saturn] be occidental [in the west of the chart], he makes the personal figure black or dark, thin and small, with scanty hair on the head, the body without hair but well-shaped, the eyes black or dark, and the bodily temperament consisting chiefly of dryness and cold. Illnesses could be foreseen, and therefore guarded against, by studying the birth chart; so could the qualities of mind of the growing individual. A heavy emphasis on the ‘tropical’ or ‘cardinal’ signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn) would generally dispose the mind to enter much into political matters, rendering it eager to engage in public and turbulent affairs, fond of distinction, and busy in theology; at the same time ingenious, acute, inquisitive, inventive, speculative and studious of astrology and divination. The ‘fixed’ signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius), if stressed, make the mind just, uncompromising, constant, firm of purpose, prudent, patient, industrious, strict, chaste, mindful of injuries, steady in pursuing its object, contentious, desirous of honour, seditious, avaricious and pertinacious. Those born with an emphasis on the ‘bicorporeal’ or ‘mutable’ signs, (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces) would have minds that were variable, versatile, not easy to be understood, volatile and unsteady, inclined to duplicity, amorous, wily, fond of music, careless, full of expedients, and regretful. But the planets also play their part in shaping the character. Saturn, for instance, in a certain relationship with Venus in the birth chart, and if ‘exalted’ (well-placed within a sympathetic sign), made men averse to women, and renders them fond of governing, prone to solitude, highly reserved, regardless of rank, indifferent to beauty, envious, austere, unsociable, singular in opinion, addicted to divination and to religious services and mysteries, solicitous of the priesthood, fanatical and subservient to religion, solemn, reverential, sedate, studious of wisdom, faithful in friendship, continent, reflective, circumspect, and scrupulous in regard to female friendship. On the other hand if not in association with Venus, and ill-placed, Saturn could make men licentious and libidinous, practisers of lewdness, careless, and impure in sexual intercourse; obscene, treacherous to women, especially to those of their own families; wanton, quarrelsome, sordid, hating elegance, slanderous, drunken, superstitious, adulterous and impious; blasphemers of the gods and scoffers at holy rites. Book Four continues the interpretation of various aspects of the birth chart — how to discern a baby’s future wealth, rank and employment; the probable nature of his or her marriage, and attitude to sex. For instance Mars placed distantly from Venus and Saturn but in proximity to Jupiter would make men ‘pure and decorous in sexual intercourse, and incline them to natural usages only’, while if Mars was supported by Venus, they ‘will become highly licentious and attempt to gratify their desires in every mode’. The Tetrabiblos was enormously influential in its time, and for centuries after. Other astrologers, such as Hephaestion of Thebes, Paul of Alexandria and Julius Firmicus, used it, and saw it as a seminal work. Even today it is read by astrologers, not merely because some of its precepts are part of astrological heritage, but because it offers cogent arguments to support its theory. For instance, Ptolemy grasped the nettle of the Precession of the Equinoxes, pointing out that ‘the beginnings of the signs are to be taken from the equinoctial and tropical points. This rule is not only stated very clearly by writers on the subject, but it is also evident by the demonstrations constantly afforded, that their natures, influences and familiarities have no other origin than from the tropics and equinoxes ...’ In other words, it is the 30 degree section of the ecliptic within which planets may be placed that matters, and not the fact that certain constellations may or may not be behind them. Yet that hoary old argument is still raked up, despite the fact that Ptolemy settled it firmly two thousand years ago. Some astrologers, who like to view the subject mystically rather than practically, have found Ptolemy somewhat dry and uninspiring. Yet he could be intoxicated, like so many of the astronomers of his time, by the sheer romance of the universe: ‘Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day; but when I follow the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth; I ascend to Zeus himself to feast me on ambrosia, the food of the gods.’ Ptolemy’s sheer enthusiasm no less than his certainty has always been infectious to generations that followed him; but it is also true that many passages of the Tetrabiblos read today with a peculiarly modern air, in view of the most recent discoveries of previously unsuspected cosmic rays and gravitational effects between the planets. Its errors of fact are no more (indeed, no less) than those of any scientific treaties of its time; and it is a model of the best of its kind. We have only to compare it with other astrological books of roughly the same period to see its superiority. Take, for instance, the existing fragment of the Salmeschnaiko, another influential textbook, full of generalizations: ... This period makes many find their livelihood as advocates, others as wizards, many as singers of gods and kings, and many as translators of languages ... Many, however, also consume the substance of others. [The Lord of Flame] makes many passive homosexuals, and many cohabiting with their aunts and stepmothers so as to debauch them. It is not easy to discover just how far astrology was used by the Greeks at a personal level. Eudoxos, in the 4th century BC, condemned horoscopes used for personal predictions, and Theophrastus, a little later, was surprised to hear from the Chaldeans that they claimed to be able to predict events in the lives of individuals as well as making weather forecasts. Ennius (239-169 BC) is the first Latin writer to mention the people who write down the signs of heaven Noting the Goats or Scorpions of great Jove And other monstrous names of horrid shapes Climbing the Zodiac ... and Cato, who died in 149 BC, warned the manager of his farm not to consult travelling Chaldeans. Stoicism, when it became the fashion in Rome, must have been responsible for an early interest in astrology, too. It is perhaps fair to guess that the forecasts made for Romans during the early centuries after Christ were of much the same sort as those devised for the Greeks in the centuries before: it is simply that more of the former have survived. These Roman examples are extremely various, as Jack Lindsay points out in his exhaustive Origins of Astrology (1971). Few of them, however, attempt to predict the future. Presumably this was done, if at all, in conversation with clients, and on the basis of lengthy files of notes kept by astrologers, showing the positions of the planets at birth and the subsequent career of the subject, as well as of physical characteristics. A man born on 14 December became a deputy-governor but annoyed his superior and ended up working in a quarry with prisoners. Another, born on 23 April 104, had short arms. Yet another was ill and had a close escape at sea, but was saved thanks to the benevolent position of Saturn. Most astrologers have kept notes of that sort, building up dossiers relating the positions of the planets at the birth of an individual to subsequent events or to physical characteristics. Someone born on 10 November 114 had in his forty-second year ‘quarrels and confusion and notoriety through a woman’, and two years later ‘the violent death of a slave and crisis of his father, and accusation of ignoble descent and rape. But he received help and gifts from friends ... ’ Someone else, born on 21 January 116, was effeminate and ‘had unmentionable vices, for Capricorn is lascivious and its ruler [Saturn] was in the Bull, the sign [which would indicate the kind of] weakness, and the Scorpion indicates the kind of lewdery.’ Not unsurprisingly, he seems to have been drummed out of his high position in the army after some undefined incident. By AD 188 Vettius Valens of Antioch, the well-known astrologer, had amassed a fine library of horoscopes, and sets out over a hundred of them in his Anthologiae, illustrating the interpretation of birth charts, and stressing that it is as a result of the detailed examination of how the planets have worked in the life of his clients that he has become so practised and accurate an astrologer. His life is the first we have that can be compared to the lives of other professional astrologers throughout the following ages: he continually recorded his findings, occasionally wrote textbooks (his Teacher’s Manual is, alas, lost), and had continually to defend himself against attacks both from other astrologers and from lay antagonists. But if many astrologers, through the latter centuries BC in Greece and in the early years of the Roman empire, practised relatively quietly with lay men and women who had only the lowest rank in society, we find for the first time in Rome detailed accounts of the part they played in influencing the politics of a country through high-placed clients. For the next eighteen hundred years astrology was to be part of the personal and political lives of most rulers and of their people.

Volume II : The Prestigious Planets

The planets, seen as gods, played so early a part in prophesy and divination that evidence of their effect on the history of Babylonia is hard to come by. Even when it does present itself, it is extremely uncertain when concerned with dates earlier than the 10th century BC. Copies of copies of documents from the library of Sargon of Agade, who ruled Babylonia in about 2000 BC, suggest that he instructed his astrologers to choose propitious moments for starting ambitious projects, and his library no doubt contained collections of star omens. But it is only with the mul.APIN, three thousand years later, which summarizes the astronomical knowledge of its time, that we approach the realm of fact rather than conjecture; here are accounts of genuine observations of the movements of the planets as they travelled three Roads — the Road of Anu, god of the northern sky, of Enlil, god of the atmosphere (the path which the Greeks christened the ecliptic, and later the zodiac), and of Ea, god of the deep. The laborious gathering of the facts enshrined in these tablets must have gone on for centuries: there are hints of a set of tablets dating from the time of Hammurapi, sixteen hundred years earlier, which record the movements of Venus — even then perhaps used in connection with the interpretation of certain omens. It was in the 7th century BC that the earliest astrologers of whom we know were recorded, during the reigns of Esarhaddon (681-668) and his successor Assurbanipal. Esarhaddon employed Akkullanu, Balasi, Ishtar-shumeresh, Nabun-adinshum and Nabua-heriba; Assurbanipal’s astrological advisers included Adad-shumusur, Mar-Ishtar and Belushezib. The astrologers were established in workshops or studios attached to the temple of Ea, the god of oracles and inventor of writing. At the outset of his reign Esarhaddon instructed them to calculate for him the best time at which he should start restoring the images of the gods and rebuilding their sanctuaries. He also asked more personal questions: was it a good time for his son to visit him? (his predecessor had been murdered by his offspring); would he find the coming eclipse dangerous? These simple questions are among the first personal enquiries on record. The weight that Esarhaddon gave to his astrologers’ interpretations of the movements of the planets sprang from his reverence for the planets themselves. The preamble of his important treaty with a Median king begins: In the presence of the planets Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mercury, Mars, Sirius, and in the presence of Assur, Anu, Enlil, Ea, Sin, Shamash... Thus the planet-gods are given precedence over the ancient territorial gods — even before Shamash the Sun and Sin the Moon. Naturally, such prestigious personalities as these gods of the skies must control the most important matters within their dominions. Diodorus says that the Babylonians called the five planets the Interpreters because they decided the fate of both individuals and nations. The planetary forecasts that have survived naturally concern kings and governors, but it was accepted that at least one planet-god held sway over the birth of even the lowliest individual — and Diodorus reports that the Babylonians took into consideration the influences of twenty-four stars known as ‘the judges of the world’, and thirty stars called ‘consulting gods’. Which stars these were, and whether there were fifty-four separate ones or the same star sometimes shared a dual function, we do not know. It is doubtful whether the people of Babylonia — even, it may be, the rulers — knew much about the intricacies of the astrology practised by their astrologer-priests. They got a glimpse of astrological lore through the myths and legends of their civilization: most notably in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the ruler of Sumer, surviving fragmentarily on twelve tablets from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh. Each of his twelve adventures relates to a sign of the zodiac: he meets a Scorpion Man in the sign of Scorpio, reaches the Waters of Death in Capricorn, consults a halfman, half-bull called Ea-bani in Taurus, and receives a proposal of marriage from the goddess Ishtar in Virgo. The Babylonians, on hearing these stories, learned to regard their own lives too as a quest for immortality, running parallel to that of the Sun god as he travelled through the constellations. The earliest individual predictions were made without the help of the zodiac, and when they were made for a king were interpreted as applying to the whole kingdom: an unfortunate month for the monarch meant an unfortunate month for the state. Even so, some crude personal predictions have survived for non-royal individuals. There is a Babylonian omen text from the second half of the second millenium which predicts certain events from the month of a child’s birth — crude indeed; as crude as the modern astrological paperbacks that tell you what your child will be like if he or she is born ‘under’ a certain sign. The earliest surviving horoscope, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is dated 410 BC, and is for the son of Shuma-usar, son of Shuma-iddina, descendant of Deke, who was born when ‘the Moon was below the Horn of the Scorpion, Jupiter in the Fish, Venus in the Bull, Saturn in the Crab, Mars in the Twins. Mercury, which had set ... was ... invisible.’ There is no interpretation given for this child; a modern astrologer would say that he was sensual and loving, possessive and jealous, with powerful instincts and emotions, had a strong sense of patriarchal tradition, was financially shrewd and ambitious, prone to periods of restlessness and possibly incapable of consistent steady work. A later horoscope, for 4 April 253 BC, though much damaged, did offer an interpretation: ‘He will be lacking in wealth ... His food will not suffice for his hunger. The wealth he had in his youth will not stay. His days will be long. His wife, whom people will seduce in his presence, will ...’ And there, alas, the story breaks off. It should be pointed out that these earliest horoscopes were not set out within the familiar circle of a ‘modern’ horoscope, representing a map of the sky for a particular moment and place, nor in the earlier square form which persisted until the 17th century, and is sometimes seen even today. They were merely lists of the positions of the planets. The word horoscope, incidentally, derives from the Greek horoskopos, meaning the sign ascending over the eastern horizon at a given moment (from hora, time, and skopos, observer). By the 3rd century BC astrologers had at their command a proper almanac giving the positions of the Moon and planets at regular intervals over a number of years, together with conjunctions of the Sun and Moon. These suggested an order in an otherwise orderless, incoherent universe, an order man should strive to emulate; the movements of planets in the skies had meaning which man was capable of understanding, and related to his life — otherwise why should the planets move at all? It could not be that they were the products of accident. This theory had great political importance, and is advanced again and again over the next two thousand years throughout Europe, as an argument in favour of order in society. The idea that the influence of the planets was all-pervading, and that a true interpreter of that influence was of enormous value, was widely spread in the centuries just before the death of Christ, by the Chaldeans. The term should really always be written in inverted commas. Chaldea was properly a province of Babylonia, whose citizens soon became the élite of the country, virtually dominating its ruling class as early as the 8th century BC. Eventually, ‘Babylonia’ and ‘Chaldea’ became interchangeable terms; but for some reason the popular meaning of the term ‘Chaldean’ came to be ‘astrologer’. In the Book of Daniel, for instance, ‘Chaldean’ always meant that — or mathematician, astronomer, wizard or magician! Many leading astrologers were literally Chaldeans, although many no doubt came from other areas of Babylonia or other parts of the Middle East. Even countries not noted for a special interest in astrology had a contribution to make. Persia, for instance, produced El Hakim, otherwise Gjamasp, a court astrologer to the semi-legendary king Hystaspes of Iran in the 6th century BC, who wrote a book in which he examined the effect of the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn on the history of the world. Judicia Gjamaspis offered predictions that have been interpreted as foreseeing the birth of Christ and the rise of Islam. In India, certain predictions were already possible by the 6th century BC, as we see from the works of Varaha Mihira, whose astronomical textbook, the Brihat Sambita, suggests that the portents to be seen in the skies are so many and so complex that every astrologer should have at least four assistants, and that ‘the king who does not honour a scholar accomplished in horoscopy and astronomy, clever in all branches and accessories, comes to grief.’ But it was the Chaldeans, predominantly, who carried astrology to other nations and broadened its scope, claiming for the first time for instance that not only a man, but a city, could have its ‘moment of birth’, and that therefore an astrologer could advise on the laying of the foundation stone at an auspicious moment, in order to give the city a horoscope encouraging security and prosperity. One of the first instances we find of an astrologer offering advice on that subject is in about 312 BC, when Seleucus I founded the city of Seleucia on the Tigris. Seleucus was a devout adherent of astrology (unlike his chief antagonist Antigonos, who ignored the prediction that Seleucus would kill him on the field of battle, which he did, in 301). When he was planning Seleucia he consulted a number of Chaldeans. These were, like the Babylonians, against the idea of the new city, which they suspected (rightly) would in time mean the desertion and ruin of Babylon itself. They therefore worked out the least auspicious time for the cornerstone of the new city to be laid, and advised Seleucus accordingly. He issued his orders; but his workmen were so eager to raise the city that they started work before the given time, thus providing the city with a highly propitious horoscope! The birth chart of Seleucia is lost. That for another of Seleucus’ cities, Antioch, has survived — calculated for 22 May 300 BC — as have those for Constantinople, Alexandria, Gaza, Caesarea; sometimes representations of parts of these were engraved on coins minted in the cities concerned. From Babylonia, the Chaldeans carried astrology into Egypt, and more importantly into Greece. The enormous importance in Egypt of myths about the sky gods, the travels and adventures of Sin, the Moon god, Shamash the Sun god, or Ishtar the personification of Venus, have led people to believe that that country must have made a great contribution to the development of astrology. In fact, its interest in the planets came fairly late — apart from a devotion to Venus, which anyway was seen as a star of the morning and evening rather than as a planet. The impression that the Egyptians had a long tradition of astrological knowledge probably arose because they were jealous of the older tradition of Babylonia. When in 260 BC Berosus (supported by Diodorus and Cicero) claimed that the Chaldean astrological texts were almost half a million years old, Egyptian astronomers countered by claiming that their texts dated from at least 630,000 BC. Just as with the other advanced civilizations, there was certainly an early interest in astronomical events. Egyptian texts dating from as early as the 13th century BC show a familiarity with the positions of the stars; but the Egyptian obsession was more with the devising of a workable calendar than with any astrological significance. They turned to other omens for prediction: the cry of a new-born child, for instance, or its appearance. If it turned its eyes towards the Sun, it was a sign of early death. They interpreted dreams, too, and employed necromancy. Discussion about the place of the pyramids in the development of astrology in Egypt seems fruitless. It is no doubt the case that some if not all of the pyramids were constructed for astronomical purposes, or at the very least with astronomy in mind; and since astronomy was indistinguishable from astrology, there is no point in denying that for instance the Great Pyramid, built in about 2500 BC, has a place in astrological history. But what place? Innumerable theories have been advanced to explain the pyramids and to discover their secrets. As early as 1883 it was suggested that they had been erected as astronomical observatories and star clocks. Years later, it was proposed that the Egyptians who built the Great Pyramid must have known that the earth was round, and flattened at the poles, that they could measure the precise length of the year and had mastered a system of map projection. The claim that the first horoscope was cast in Egypt in 2767 BC is suspect, although there is certainly a diagram of that date representing a particular moment of time — not, as far as we know, connected with the birth or life of a particular individual, but an early affirmation of belief that a particular moment of time had an individual significance (a proposition echoed in the 20th century by the psychologist C.G. Jung). Its existence shows that the early Egyptians were capable of close observation of the heavens; they may have used the pyramids for that purpose. When the tomb of Rameses II was excavated, it was found to contain two circles of gold marked in 360 degrees, and with symbols showing the rising and setting of stars. This suggests that he was interested in ascending degrees — the degree of the ecliptic rising over the eastern horizon at any particular time, an important matter in astrology. Rameses II — Ozymandias, the builder of the temple at Abu Simbel — reigned from about 1292-1225 BC; and the tomb of Rameses V contained papyri offering astrological hints for every hour of every month of the year. There is evidence too that astrologers in the Egypt of thirteen hundred years before Christ knew about the four fixed signs of the zodiac (astrologers divide the signs into quadruplicities or qualities — cardinal, mutatable and fixed). In the sarcophagus of Seti I (c 1317 BC) the four jars containi the intestines were protected by four deities, represented with a human head (Mestha), a dog’s head (Hapi), a jackal’s head (Tuamutef) and a hawk’s head (Qebhsennuf). These clearly represented the four fixed signs with Mestha as Aquarius, Hapi as Leo, Tuamutef as Taurus and Qebhsennuf as Scorpio. But this is not a sign that advanced astrology was practised: the four Suns of Horus were the gods of astronomical myths, with astrological associations. A major contribution to the early history of astrology was, however, made by Egypt: the invention of the decans by the division of the circle of the ecliptic into thirty-six sections, three decans or sections of 10 degrees to each sign. The earliest sight we have of these is on a coffin lid of the Middle Kingdom, on which the sky is shown with the names of the decans in columns. The zodiac did not then exist: the decans were geared to the constellations, and it was not until the Hellenistic age that they were linked with the zodiac and became truly astrological in significance. It seems that they were contrived because of the Egyptian belief that every moment of time should have its presiding deity. Stobaeus, who collected valuable extracts from Greek authors in the 5th century AD, in an essay addressed to his son, claimed that the decans: exert their influence on bodies from on high. How could they not act on us as well, on each in particular and on all men together? Thus, my child, among all the catastrophes of universal scope due to forces emanating from them, we may cite as examples — mark well my words — the changes of kings, the uprisings of cities, famines, pestilences, flux and reflux of the sea, earthquakes. Nothing of all that, my child, occurs without the influence of the decans. The decans were later to be specially important in medical astrology, when different ailments were specific to different decans (stomach trouble, for instance, being attributable to the first decanate of Virgo). Despite their interest in star patterns, Egyptian astrologers were not nearly as advanced as their Babylonian colleagues. Their mathematics were even more cumbrous and the zodiac reached them comparatively late — the earliest of which we have a report was engraved on the ceiling of a hall north of Esna some time before 22I BC. There are only slight differences between the earliest surviving Egyptian zodiacs (at Esna and in the chapel of Osiris at Denderah, built at about the time of Christ) and those of Babylonia; clearly the zodiac came to Egypt directly from there. And what use was made of astrology in Egypt? There were certainly predictions for the Pharaoh and for the country: ‘the Flood will come to Egypt’; ‘many men will rebel against the King’; ‘seed and grain will be high in price’; ‘the burial of a god will occupy Egypt.’ All these predictions were made on the basis of movements of the Dog star, Sothis — ‘If Sothis rises when the Moon is in the Archer’, or ‘If Sothis rises when Mercury is in the Twins’, and so on. Another papyrus, from the Roman period, makes predictions for individuals based on the presence of Venus and Mercury in the ‘houses’ of the horoscope at the time of birth. (The ‘houses’ are twelve divisions within the circle of the horoscope, relating to particular areas of life. The system was invented by the Babylonians and persists even now, although astrologers have disagreed about the system of house division.) Astrology had a part to play in formal religion, and sometimes a major one. Clement of Alexandria, a distinguished Christian writer born in about AD 150, describes an Egyptian religious procession of his own time, but with traditional and ancient elements: First goes the Precentor carrying two of Hermes’ books, one containing the Hymns of the Gods, the other directions for the kingly office. After him follows the Horoscopus, an expert in the four astrological books of Hermes. Then succeeds the Hierogrammateus, or sacred scribe, with feathers upon his head, and a book and rule in his hands, to whom it belongeth to be thoroughly acquainted with the hieroglyphics, as with cosmography, geography, the order of the Sun and Moon and five planets ... ‘The four astrological books of Hermes’ came from that legendary collection of ancient texts the Hermetic books. These were allegedly collected together by the Egyptian god Thoth, later known to the Greeks as Hermes Trismegistus, and still later to the Romans as Mercury. Some authorities believed that there were forty-two volumes of these texts; other historians were more adventurous Seleucus claimed that there were twenty thousand volumes, and Manethon was particular, having counted 36,525. The texts, however many there were, enshrined traditional knowledge about religion, art, science, geometry, alchemy, astronomy, astrology and many other subjects. They were held to be sacred, and only the highest of Egyptian priests were allowed to touch them. Alas, no one has yet discovered the tomb of Alexander the Great, in which the Emperor Severus is supposed to have entombed the last complete set. It may be that the extreme veneration in which the texts were held was a major factor in their not surviving; they were so sacred that only a few people were permitted access to them, and perhaps there came a time when those few had all died without ensuring that their charge had been passed on to posterity. However, the absence of any real knowledge of the texts has not prevented an enormous literature growing up about them, and it has never been doubted that any large collection of traditional wisdom, however put together, would certainly have contained much ancient theory about astrology. Hermes was supposed to have devised an astrological system of his own, and among the Hermetic books was, apparently, one on medical astrology, another on the decans (including a detailed catalogue going back beyond 150 BC), one on zodiacal plants, and one on the astrological degrees. Hermes’ writings are quoted freely by many later astrologers, including Thrasyllus, perhaps the most influential of all astrologers of Imperial Rome, Antiochus of Athens, and Sarapion, a pupil of Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer. To what extent pieces of the original texts have survived — and obviously there were original texts, whether or not they were written by Hermes — it is difficult to say; large claims have been made (and not only by the ancients, at that). Some fragments of very early astrological texts have come down to us, via the Greeks. In the 5th century AD; a Latin text, Liber Hermetis, translated from the Greek, gives a muddled mixture of theory about the decans, conjunctions, the meanings of certain planets in certain signs, and advice on personal matters — how to predict the day of death, useful or difficult days, marriage, duration of life — which seems to derive from a very early original. It pays special attention to the decans: the third decan of Gemini is responsible for muscular pains, the first of Virgo controls the stomach, the first of Cancer the heart, and so on. It is in this text that the Astrological Man makes his first appearance: onto a figure of the body is imposed the zodiac circle, straightened out — the first sign, Aries, at the head, and the last, Pisces, at the feet. Between them various parts of the body fall under the influence of the signs in their order. It is a system still used today, although with some amendments: Libra for instance is now said to ‘rule’ the kidneys, whereas Hermes claimed it affected the buttocks. A passage from the Liber Hermetis will do very well to summarize the general attitude to astrology as it was when the Chaldeans had passed it on to the Greeks as a systemized whole: Man is called by the informed, a World, since he is wholly correspondent with the World’s nature. Indeed at the moment of conception there spurts from the seven planets a whole complex of rays that bear on each part of the man. And the same thing happens at the birth-hour, according to the position of the twelve signs. Thus the Ram is called the head, and the head’s sense-organs are shared out among the seven planets. The right eye goes to the Sun, the left to the Moon, and ears to Saturn, the brain to Jupiter, the tongue and uvula to Mercury, smelling and taste to Venus, all the blood-vessels to Mars. If then at the moment of conception or birth one of the stars finds itself in a bad condition, there is produced an infirmity in the member corresponding with that star. For instance, a man has four main parts: head, thorax, hands, feet. One of these has become infirm at the conception-moment or at birth somewhere by its heavenly patron having been itself in a bad way; an eye, the two eyes, an ear, the two ears, or again the teeth have undergone some damage or speech has been blurred; the ray of a malevolent planet has come to strike one of those parts, spoil and corrupt it. It is interesting that the anonymous writer or writers apparently believed that the planets’ position should be observed not only at the moment of birth of a child but at the moment of conception. Throughout the history of astrology there have been arguments about this. The moment of birth is obviously the more convenient to record — indeed, it is normally impossible to know the precise moment of conception, although if personal astrology works because of the overt influence of the planets on the forming embryo, the moment of conception must surely be nearer the time when the influence is exerted than the moment of birth. But the presentation of man as microcosm and the world, or even the universe, as macrocosm, is one to which almost every astrologer since AD 400 has subscribed. The Hermetic texts, in as far as we can guess at their total content, presented astrology to the Western world not only as a method of divination but as a religious conception of the world and man’s place in it. It was to be inseparably combined with Greek philosophy, and to be increasingly important not only to philosophers and rulers but to the man in the street.

Volume I : Distant Beginnings

How, where, when, did astrology originate? How, where, when, why did man first begin to believe that the Sun, Moon and visible planets influence his character and life, the health of his beasts, the quality of his crops, the weather — indeed, every aspect of life on earth? The answer must be, almost as soon as he was capable of intelligent thought, for he then realized that the Sun as a source of warmth and light ruled all living things; that with the Moon the tides swelled and sank, that it affected other natural cycles, that it had an effect upon emotional stability. Here was the basis of an astrological theory. Interestingly, some of the earliest astrological artefacts to have survived come from the Middle East where, in about 15,000 BC, the earliest agricultural systems evolved — gardeners have always recognized that there is a difference between the quality of morning and afternoon light, and that the times at which plants are planted, herbs picked, seem to affect their growth and virtue. On the whole, it must have been man’s natural reverence for the magical, strange moving lights in the sky, regarded as gods, that led to the development of astrology. Out of the thick mists that conceal the earliest history of the subject have come down to us a number of cuneiform tablets — brick and stone slabs inscribed with triangular or wedge-shaped characters — recording the very simplest astronomical phenomena: eclipses of the Moon, certain planetary movements, interpreted as predicting famine or war or peace or plenty. Babylonia during the 18th-17th centuries BC was riddled with superstition, and many omens were used and recorded — the bites of certain animals, dreams, patterns of bird flight, the appearance of new-born babies (’When a woman bears a child with small ears, the house will fall into ruin’), and such eccentricities as the appearance in one’s house of a pig with palm fibres in its mouth. Astronomical phenomena were only one aspect of man’s attempts to predict the future, but a very widespread one: an interest in the earliest form of astrology was common to several early civilizations, not only in the Middle East, from Anatolia to Persia, but in the Far East and in the Incan, Mayan and Mexican civilizations, where those planets that could be seen by the naked eye — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — were identified as gods with various names and personalities, and where their movements against the background pattern of the stars were regarded as obviously significant. Astronomer-astrologers slowly acquired more and more knowledge about the planets, and began not only to observe eclipses but the way in which the planets moved — sometimes hesitating, sometimes appearing to move backwards, sometimes seeming to meet each other, then part; as they did so, they elaborated the predictions they based on the movements. Only the roughest forecasts were being made in the time of Ammisaduqa, tenth king of the First Dynasty, in the 17th century BC, but royal libraries of the Assyrian kings at Nineveh, Calah (Nimrud) and Ashur in the 8th-7th centuries BC, and the temple libraries of the chief cities of Babylon, had on their shelves a collection of over 7000 astrological omens recorded on 70 tablets (now known, after the opening words of the first omen, as Enuma Anu Enlil). The reason why this elaboration of the astrological theory took place in the Middle East rather than, say, among the American Indians of Wisconsin or among the Aztecs, who certainly had an equally keen early interest in the subject, was that the Babylonians were better astronomers and mathematicians; they evolved a calendar, and by 500 BC were already moving towards the invention of the zodiac, that essential element in the personalization of astrology. The Babylonians puzzled for centuries over the patterns in the night sky before producing a calendar reliable enough to enable them to predict eclipses and to work ‘backwards’ in order to figure out the celestial events of the past. They seem to have started by simply working out the duration of day and night, then of the rising and setting of the Moon and the appearance and disappearance of Venus. The very earliest calendars date a new month from the first appearance of a new Moon. But the fact that the interval between new Moons is irregular — on average, 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds — meant that it was extremely difficult to devise a calendar in which each month began with the new Moon, but each year began at the spring equinox. (To do so, you have to declare an extra month every two or three years — and even then you will be one and a half days out every eight years.) The details of early calendars and their evolution are complex; suffice to say that the problem was solved with reasonable accuracy (and, let us remember, without the aid of mechanical clocks) by the Babylonians. Since then, there have been additional complications and evolutions. Julius Caesar had to summon an astronomer from Alexandria to sort out the muddle into which the Roman calendar degenerated, and his Julian calendar eventually fell out of phase by no less than eleven days, so that in 1752 Britain was forced to adopt the Gregorian calendar (established in the rest of Europe by Pope Gregory in 1582), cutting eleven days from the year. At midnight on 2 September came 14 September, and people rioted in the streets because they thought the civil servants were doing them out of eleven days of life. Once a calendar had been devised, observation and the application of mathematics meant that planetary movements could be predicted. The next step was the invention of the zodiac. In the first place this was devised as a means of measuring time. It is a circle around which twelve constellations are set, each marking a segment of thirty degrees of the ecliptic, the imaginary path the Sun seems to follow on its journey round the earth. Because that journey takes more or less 365 days, astronomers in Babylon, Egypt and China independently arrived at the idea of dividing the ecliptic into 360 degrees, easily divisible into twelve sections. The circle, for practical purposes, had to start somewhere. In ancient times it started variously from certain fixed stars — from Aldebaran or the Bull’s Eye, for instance, or from Regulus, the brightest star in Leo. In modern astrology it starts from the vernal equinox — the point at which the Sun seems to cross the equator from south to north at the spring equinox of the northern hemisphere on 20, 21 or 22 March each year. But the equinox not only never occurs in the same spot for two years running, but its place slowly seems to rotate around the sky, taking about 28,800 years to complete the circuit (a phenomenon known as Precession of the Equinox). This is because the Earth, as it rotates, wobbles like a top slowing down; the Pole thus describes a circle, moving backwards through the zodiac. Similarly, if the zodiac is measured from a fixed point (say the first degree of Aries), it moves slowly backwards. However, this is the system used by most modern astrologers; it is known as the tropical zodiac. Some astrologers, like the ancients, use the fixed or sidereal zodiac, measured from the stars (not as fixed as all that, however, for it too moves — by one day in every 72 years!).

Introduction

There are two major problems to be faced when writing about the history of astrology. One is that of length. Astrology has been of great importance in many countries of the world since long before the invention of writing, and until at least the end of the 16th century; recently there has been a considerable revival of interest. The amount of documentation is therefore almost incalculable, and to examine the subject in depth would mean a work of such size that probably no publisher could contemplate it without a massive subsidy, and only a writer prepared to give his life to the subject could attempt it. The second problem is that of partiality. Very few people seem able to discuss astrology without emotion. This is partly a matter of temperament, but also often a matter of misinformation and almost always of bias of one sort or another. It can be, for instance, the result of a simple contemplation of the harm that may be done by an uncritical belief in the infallibility of astrological advice — quite as much harm as can be done by the uncritical acceptance of the infallibility of theological advice. Sometimes too a simple-minded devotion to astrology has resulted in the acceptance of legends entirely without basis, invariably supporting the claims of astrology. Some ‘histories’ have repeated such legends. In a recent one by an American writer, for example, it is asserted that Lord Byron was ‘quite a good astrologer, who set up his own son’s chart and quite accurately predicted the main events of the latter’s life.’ This would be a more convincing statement if Byron had ever had a son, or if there was the faintest evidence anywhere in his life or letters that he was even slightly interested in astrology. The present authors should declare an interest. Julia Parker is a consultant astrologer, past President of the Faculty of Astrological Studies, founded in London in 1948, with pupils in most countries of the world, and co-author of The Compleat Astrologer, a comprehensive textbook of astrology. Derek Parker, the other co-author, remains a sceptic for whom the practice of astrology is largely a mystery, but who has become convinced that there is sufficient evidence now available to support many astrological propositions, and that it would be foolish to dismiss the subject out of hand. In this book we have attempted to maintain a reasonable balance. This is not meant to be a work that will convince anyone that astrology works, or that it does not. It is meant as a necessarily brief account of the spread of astrology through the civilized world, and of the major figures involved in its history. Amid the shelves of bad books on the subject, there are a few important and reliable source books to which any writer about astrology must be indebted. Lynn Thorndike’s massive History of magic and experimental science (1941) is most certainly one. Jack Lindsay’s Origins of astrology (1971), F. H. Cramer’s Astrology in Roman law and politics (1954), and Keith Thomas’s Religion and the decline of magic (1971) are other examples; and A. L. Rowse’s Simon Forman (1974) is the earliest example of the work of a serious historian who has thought it worth while to go through the untouched papers of a prominent Elizabethan astrologer. Dr John Dee’s papers await similarly thorough treatment from some adventurous Elizabethan scholar. Finally, no reader can be thoroughly versed in the latest state of astrology who has not read Geoffrey Dean’s and Arthur Mather’s Recent advances in natal astrology (1977); while the work of the husband and wife team, Michel and Francoise Gauquelin, in several volumes, provides much statistical evidence, and thought-provoking argument. The work of Dane Rudhyar in America and of John Addey of the British Astrological Association is more specialized still, and the journals of the British Association and the American Federation of Astrologers are serious publications worth examination. We are grateful, as always, to various librarians for their assistance; and to many astrologers who have been quick with suggestions of material to be consulted. And we are grateful to the Folio Society Limited for permission to quote lines from William Ginnis’s translation of Sebastian Brant’s The ship of fools, and to Penguin Books Limited for permission to quote from Nevill Coghill’s ‘translation’ of Chaucer’s The Canterbury tales (© 1958, 1960, 1975, 1977).

Inside AdSense: An update from AdSense about the response to Haiti Earthquake

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Understanding Astrology

Astrology is just one of those subjects: It's easy to learn but can take a lifetime to master. Most people are familiar with the most basic aspect of Astrology, their Star Sign (or Sun Sign), and usually they can name at least one common trait of their Sign. Star Signs are popularized through all the horoscopes that appear in daily newspaper columns, magazines and on web sites. Unfortunately, many people think that their Star Sign is all that there is to Astrology. While it is a good place to start, there is a lot more to Astrology than just the Sun's position! Astrology is not a modern invention dating back only a few years, decades or even centuries. Astrology has been studied for millennia, and it dates back as far as recorded history. The original Astrologers were priests and scholars, and they were looked up to as doctors and learned men. According to modern speculation, the Three Wise Men of Christian belief were Astrologers! At that time, Astrology was the same science as Astronomy and Psychology, whose modern descendants arose from Astrology. In ancient times, the Greeks and Romans based their system of gods on what they believed was up in the sky. Zeus, who equates to Jupiter in Roman myth, and the other gods and goddesses were based on the Planets visible to the ancients. Astrology was similarly popular in Babylon and Egypt, and it also rose in the Middle East, India and China. Modern Astrology has changed with the discovery of new Planets: first Uranus in 1781, then Neptune and Pluto, as well as the four feminine-energy Asteroids. These three Planets have a stronger effect on generations as a whole rather than individuals, but they still have an important place in modern Astrology. Astrology is about the interaction between the Planets (including the Sun and Moon) and the Signs. The relationships between them and their interactions are mathematically based, and Astrology studies these mathematical cycles. Each Sign represents a different aspect of the whole human; Aries starts the cycle, representing the Self, and Pisces completes it, representing the mass unconscious of all mankind. In between, each other Sign carries the energy of a different phase of man's evolution within the universe. In some ways, the forces between the Planets involved in Astrology can be simplified into one word: gravity. The Sun has the greatest gravity and the strongest effect in Astrology, followed by the Moon, the Earth's satellite. The other Planets are not truly satellites of the Earth, but nevertheless, they have gravity and so affect the Earth. The Sun controls the Earth's motion and the Moon controls its tides, but the other Planets have their own effects on the Earth -- and on the people who live on Earth. Sometimes their influences can be so strong that they outweigh the Sun's energy! Astrology can be understood as a philosophy that helps to explain life, rather than a type of mysticism that can be used as a predictive tool. Instead of discussing what the Planets do to us, we can explain ourselves based on Planetary indications. The Signs work the same way: Each of the twelve Signs is a unique combination of one of the four Elements and one of the three Qualities. The Elements and Qualities demonstrate that we are all part of the environment. There is a connection between all living things and all matter on this Planet. Astrology ties humans together: We are all faced with the same Planetary interactions, and we are all part of the same cycles. Despite all these connections, Astrology does not tie you to being a certain way, and it doesn't predict everything about you. Astrology explains the energy in your life and its potential challenges and possibilities. You can evolve from your chart. Astrology is about you. What you can learn from it can help you make a choice between free will and destiny. In addition, Astrology does not need to affect or change people's religious beliefs. In fact, most religions incorporate some idea linking the way you live your life to where you end up in the afterlife. Astrology deals with the same sort of idea through the concept of karma: What you do in this lifetime determines what will happen to you in your next lifetime. The philosophies are the same; they are just expressed in different ways. There are many different categories of Astrology. Medical, business and stock market Astrology are often practiced for health or financial reasons. Weather Astrology is popular in some areas. Mundane Astrology is the study of politics and world events, while Electional Astrology helps people find favorable times or days to get married, start a business, begin a new job and so on. Horary Astrology is predictive, studying questions based upon the specific moment they arise. The most popular type of Astrology, however, is Natal, which analyzes people based on their time and place of birth. There are two major types of Astrology practiced today in the Western World: Tropical and Siderial. Tropical Astrology assigns the Signs based on their position in relation to the Spring Equinox, which marks the Astrological New Year and usually falls on March 21. The Equinox represents 0 degrees Aries. Siderial Astrology assigns positions based on constellations, rather than in relation to the Equinox. At present, Siderial Astrology is 24 degrees behind Tropical Astrology, so a person born under 23 degrees Libra in Tropical Astrology is born at 29 degrees Virgo in Siderial Astrology. The Age of Aquarius is now upon us! This means technology is progressing forward, society's attitudes and values are changing and perhaps will slant more toward the radical. Astrology will become more accepted -- even part of mainstream thought! By creating this site and providing information about Astrology that is both informative and entertaining, Astrology.com's hope is to move the perception of Astrology past light entertainment to a more valuable tool for people to use on a personal basis, both with themselves and others. Enjoy!

Chart Wheel

The Twelfth House

House of Subconscious The Twelfth House is commonly referred to as the House of the Unconscious. The unconscious state can help engender our successes, as well as assist us in coping with our failures. Success vs. failure: do we consciously confront our lives or subconsciously sweep things under the proverbial rug? This House might more aptly be called the House of Reckoning, since it is in the Twelfth that we review what we have been (and done) and decide where we go from there. Along with these unconscious musings, we also deliberate on strengths and weaknesses which are hidden from public view. Our subconscious works hard on our behalf, trying to make sense of our lives. This shadow play is slow and long, and often fraught with fear and pain. It is in this context that we are confronted with our sorrows, suffering and the secrets we keep from ourselves and from others. Ultimately, we are also confronted with our fate: karma. Here we meet up with the results of everything we have done. This further puts the focus on repressed agendas and restraint. What have we wrought with in our lives? This is a key question of the Twelfth House, and we will deal with it both consciously and unconsciously. Will the answers compel us to be transformed or reborn? This is another cornerstone of the Twelfth House -- the manner in which we move forward. We can learn much from the unconscious. In its most noble manifestation, we will be prompted to be charitable. If we learn our lessons, both past and present, we are also better equipped to move forward. The Twelfth House compels us to seek closure in a spiritual way as an aid to positive growth. The last House of the zodiac also recognizes that we can feel bound in life -- stuck and confined. For this reason, this House rules jails, hospitals, institutions, asylums and any space that inhibits freedom. More gloominess in the Twelfth comes in the form of danger, secret enemies and clandestine affairs. Beware! While some may decry the Twelfth House as the garbage bin of the zodiac, it's really an unfair term. Ultimately, this House is the champion of positive transformations. It is here that we stand on the precipice and determine how we will proceed. By visiting the unconscious and meeting with the past, we begin to glean what the future will bring. The Twelfth House is ruled by the Sign Pisces and the Planets Jupiter and Neptune.

The Eleventh House

House of Friendships The Eleventh House is commonly referred to as the House of Friends. Through our friends, we find strength in numbers -- we see the power of the collective, the group. Groups addressed by this House include clubs, organizations, social groups, networking organizations and professional associations. The focus here is on the activities we undertake within these groups, how we make a difference and as a result, how we grow and actualize our true selves. Further, it's the group, by virtue of its collective strength, which helps to define what we as individuals will do. As we grow, we have more opportunities and possibilities available to us, and the Eleventh House addresses these. Our interactions and efforts are in keeping with our priorities in life; these interactions have the ability to enhance our lives. A labor of love? Yes, in many ways. Through our friends and group activities we add substance and meaning to our lives and to society. The Eleventh House also speaks to destiny -- in simple terms, our hopes and dreams, what we desire and what we want to achieve. Our creative vision is highlighted, the simple act of working toward our maximal selves. The power of collective creation, as well as the creative sparks generated by the group, are also important to this House. By banding together, we can create so much more. In joining with our friends, we not only accomplish a great deal, but we can also enjoy the fruits of our labor. The Eleventh House also addresses the kind of friend we are: what do we do for others? How do we view our friends? How do they view us? It is our basic character which, to a great extent, defines the friends and groups we choose. Oftentimes, we work with our friends toward a greater good and in the hope of improving society. This is our philanthropic side coming to the fore, the ability to selflessly and eagerly help others. It is also our humanity manifesting itself most effectively. At times, we may upset the proverbial apple cart, but the sum total of our efforts should be to look at the end result. If that's good, then the process of getting there, for better or for worse, is worthwhile. Lastly, the Eleventh House also governs stepchildren, foster children and adopted children. The Eleventh House is ruled by the Sign Aquarius and the Planets Saturn and Uranus.

The Tenth House

House of Social Status The Tenth House is commonly referred to as the House of Social Status. It is about the place we have attained in our social (or work/career) grouping and in society as a whole. Think status, the authority it conveys, and consequently, the role we take in our community. It also speaks to any promotions we receive, any fame we may have or will come to have and the types of business and social activities in which we partake. With respect to achievement, this House focuses on how we see ourselves and how the community as a whole sees us (and our efforts). Through this House, we work on manifesting ourselves. Vocation is important in the Tenth House. What role will we choose and how will we best fill it? How much do we want to achieve? Career, professional goals, ambition and motivation all come into play here. In a more practical context, employers and their rules are covered here, as are any other organizations (specifically the government) which have the ability to rule over us. Along with our life's work comes the challenge of ruling over others, although there will generally be someone who lords over us. The prestige and social status we accrue by virtue of our careers and vocations can be seen, intangibly, in the form of ego gratification. How we manage this is addressed by the Tenth House. It may be most difficult to tire of financial rewards in our consumerist society; surprisingly, ego massage may grow old more quickly. The question of how we will manage these gifts, and the status that comes along with them, is important to this House. Will we use our power to truly help society, or will we be willful and reckless? Not all of us are cut out for grand scale social success or equipped to help society significantly. It's also worth noting that many of our successes are achieved with the aid of society, not in a vacuum. The relationship of the individual to a group and to society is also highlighted in the Tenth House. To improve things and to make an impact, we must feel a real kinship to the cause; a fervent resolve to change things is necessary. In this way, we will achieve that social status which is truly worthwhile. Lastly, in keeping with its focus on rulers, the Tenth House addresses the father, who is generally the more authoritarian parent. The Tenth House is ruled by the Sign Capricorn and the Planet Saturn.

The Ninth House

House of Philosophy The Ninth House is commonly referred to as the House of Philosophy. In keeping with that theme, it's our search for meaning which is the focal point here. By virtue of exploring our world, we start to grasp everything that is available to us. It all boils down to understanding: understanding that which we see and feel and probing further in the hopes of realizing true meaning. Through higher education, we have the hope of understanding concepts and theories which will enhance our world. Whether it's philosophy or psychology, the Ninth House reminds us that we are on a voyage of discovery. Along that road, we will come face-to-face with our ideals and further shape the ethics by which we live. Another approach to clearer meaning and understanding of that which we see, and more importantly, that which we do not see, is through religion. Understanding and accepting that which is greater than us and our world is key to the Ninth House. Sadly, we might not always be humble in the face of what we have. A concrete understanding of the possibilities in life may well lead to ruthless ambition and greed and an over-expansion of the self. To face these demons most effectively in society, we institute laws. These laws provide for the orderly and positive growth of that society. In much the same way, philosophy and religion help add focus and purpose to a productive society. How members of a society relate, and knowing and respecting the laws by which they live, are core tenets of the Ninth House. The way in which we expand our inner and outer lives is also addressed by the Ninth House. Travel and interaction with other peoples and cultures are a means to this end. Our dreams, those which illustrate our past as well as those which speak to future events, also help to mold our being and our relationships. Taking this a step further, psychics as the bearers of relevant information also come into play. Additionally, the Ninth House addresses publishing and multinational ventures such as import/export businesses. This House also has a multigenerational view, taking into account grandchildren, as well as in-laws. At the end of the day, however, the Ninth House is best described as philosophically inclined in the search for meaning and truth. The Ninth House is ruled by the Sign Sagittarius and the Planet Jupiter.

The Eighth House

House of Sex The Eighth House is commonly referred to as the House of Sex. This House delves into relationships -- interactions with another and how certain aspects of those interactions can take on a more communal nature. It speaks to what our relationships will bring us and how we can get the most out of them. Returning to this House's emphasis on sex, it's important to note that the French refer to an orgasm as 'le petit mort' or 'the little death.' When we reach that exalted state of communion, we leave a little of ourselves behind -- die a small death. One can also choose to view this as growth, a new beginning, the rebirth of the soul or a gain for the partnership. The Eighth House is an equal-opportunity House, placing sex, death and rebirth on the same level playing field and acknowledging the viability and importance of all three. We will all experience death and rebirth as part of our lives: failed relationships leading to new ones, career changes, a new hairstyle. We are regenerated and reborn with each new phase and should welcome them. Shared resources also fall within the Eighth House: inheritance, alimony, taxes, insurance, support from another. Financial support as well as spiritual, emotional and physical support are addressed by this House. While our relationships share many of the aforementioned things, they also have their own dynamics and grow from within (we grow through our sexuality as well as through other more tangible means). That said, much as our relationships are expansive, they also have certain constraints, many which are placed on them by society. Again, taxes, alimony and the joint nature of assets come to mind. Yes, with every opportunity we have, we may face a restriction along with it. Once again, death and rebirth. In keeping with the transforming nature of this House, rituals are highlighted. Every group has its own way of peering in and looking deep into the soul and the past, if only to get a sense of what we truly are. What quality will our rituals take on? Exalted states or metamorphoses? What secrets do we keep and why? How we manage our interactions, relationships and rituals is important to the Eighth House -- will we be honest, effective and responsible? Will the riches generated by our relationships benefit the group (company, humankind) as a whole? Our legacies are key to this House: how we conduct ourselves now, and how that will play out for all time. The Eighth House is ruled by the Sign Scorpio and the Planets Mars and Pluto.

The Seventh House

House of Partnerships The Seventh House is commonly referred to as the House of Partnership. With this House, we see a shift away from the self toward another -- a partner. By cooperating with and relating to another we unite for the purpose of achieving something. Purpose is important to the Seventh House -- the act of accomplishing something great or small for the self, the partnership and even society as a whole. In uniting with another, we also become a more valuable member of our world: we make a contribution, one small cog in the wheel of life. We have purpose. Cooperation and partnership help to expedite our purpose in life. Through a partnership, we fill out our essential being. Suddenly, we see ourselves in context. Through a partnership in which we work, play, love and/or create, we are fully formed and completed. The other half helps to make us whole. Ultimately, how we relate to others will help to define the success we have as a human being and as a member of humankind. The Seventh House shows us that partnerships can take many forms: marriage, business relationships, contracts, legalities, negotiations and agreements. We will cooperate to a greater or lesser extent in these varied partnerships. The quality of that cooperation, in essence how we relate to the other, is key to the Seventh House. Why do we choose this partnership? Is it for love or money? Practical reasons? Social considerations? There are many reasons for uniting with another. We may choose to fill voids we see in ourselves. We may simply want the company and companionship of another. The partnerships we form say a great deal about ourselves and also serve to teach us much. This House wants us to know that the quality of our partnerships will enhance our lives, make them fuller, more special and better for everyone. Tensions within a partnership also serve to teach us lessons. For this reason, the Seventh House also focuses on the darker side of our unions. Divorce, lawsuits and treaties all fall within this House. At its worst, a partnership may create enemies -- and on a more global scale, these rifts can deteriorate into war. It is our reaction to this adversity which will shape the partnerships yet to come. The Seventh House is ruled by the Sign Libra and the Planet Venus.

The Fifth House

House of Pleasure The Fifth House is commonly referred to as the House of Pleasure. Oftentimes, pleasure is the result of a creative act. The simple act of creating is, essentially, giving of oneself and making something -- making another? Yes, the Fifth House does speak to procreation and children, but it also addresses the creation of art and culture. The creative life is one from which we can derive much personal pleasure and self-satisfaction. Do I like this? Does it make me feel good? Does it bring me pleasure? The answers therein are the domain of the Fifth House. Taking this pleasure principle a step further, one can give it a more human face, even two faces. Romance and romantic affairs, both emotional pleasures, are within the realm of the Fifth House. Emotional satisfaction can be gained in many ways, and yet another way addressed by this House is gambling. While this implies a financial risk, it can also be viewed as the willingness to take a risk -- on love, with money or in life. A gut risk in the hopes of a pleasurable outcome is how the Fifth House sees it. This House is actually quite rich with pleasures since it also lords over fun, games and hobbies. Life is more than just being or doing, it also includes finding -- finding the pleasure in the acts in which we engage. Children as a source of pleasure are also important in the Fifth House. This brings us back to creativity, since through our children, we create an extension of ourselves and then watch it grow. Giving our children all the good we had (and have), and then some, is certainly a pleasurable pursuit. How will this manifest itself? What form of pleasure and emotional release is best for our children? Music, dance, theater, art, science, literature -- these fancies are for them and for us. Play for the purpose of emotional enrichment and pure pleasure is what the Fifth House is all about. The Fifth House is ruled by the Sign Leo and the Sun.

The Fourth House

House of Family and Home The Fourth House is commonly referred to as the House of Home. When we think of home, we think of that place where we put down our roots. We lay our foundation and plant ourselves firmly into the Earth, as it were. One day, we will return to that very same Earth. The Fourth House brings things full circle by also addressing old age, endings and our final resting place. Much of the emphasis of the Fourth House, however, is on the concept of home. By laying down roots, we make a home for ourselves, or more specifically, the self. It's worth noting that in addition to the external home (all the bricks and mortar around us), we have really brought the essential self home. 'I'm home.' The words themselves have a peaceful ring to them. The self is now centered, grounded, one and at peace with the Earth. We seek to come home both physically and psychically, for ourselves and for those we love. By creating home, we create a meeting place, a sanctuary, a sacred place for ourselves and for others. In our home, we integrate the self with all that has come before us and helped to shape what we are today. We create a domestic space which comforts and nurtures us and serves to keep safe those we love. Also important here are family history, cultural and societal norms, and ways of being. All of these are ruled by the Fourth House, as are our ancestry, roots and heritage. These qualities are brought 'home' through us and integrated into the place we call home. Helping to create the home we make are our parents, for it is they who greatly nurture and shape our being. Therefore, the Fourth House can also be thought of as the House of the Mother, the Parent or the Nurturer. Looking at things from a strictly tangible point of view, we can see that the Fourth House also encompasses physical structures (houses) and real estate. The Fourth House represents family, history and traditions. All of these contribute to the process of becoming a true, actualized and individualized self. This is how we come home. The Fourth House is ruled by the Sign Cancer and the Moon.

The Third House

House of Communication The Third House is commonly referred to as the House of Communication. In this House, much of the communication is going on between the individual and those he or she holds close: brothers and sisters, as well as neighbors. While communication here can be both written and verbal, it also has a conscious quality to it. Think about kindred spirits and mental connections. This serves to highlight the role of intelligence within the Third House. Intelligence, as viewed in this realm, is the analytical ability one possesses within his or her environment, specifically a basic grasp of things and a practical sensibility. We use this intelligence to help us work effectively within our world and with those in it. The Third House reminds us that it's okay to use our conscious skills, as well as a more reflective intelligence, in order to make our way. A symbiotic relationship with those we hold close is also part of the plan. Let's not forget that our minds are powerful, quick and dexterous. Some things will be well-thought out, others nearly automatic. Maximizing our sum potential is the key. Early education, effectively teaching us how to think and communicate, is also covered by the Third House, as are short trips. Again, the proximate nature of travel speaks to the intimate nature of the Third House: those we know well, in our environment, keeping that environment tight. Harnessing our intelligence and sharing it effectively with others is the essence of the Third House. How do we best state our case with others, often those we love the most? Will our actions be true to our environment, and our planet, for all time? This brings to the fore emerging forms of intelligence-gathering, such as computers. Will they make or break communication as we know it? The questions posed by the Third House can be answered by listening to that House: think, process, share. The Third House is ruled by the Sign Gemini and the Planet Mercury.

The Second House

House of Possessions The Second House is commonly referred to as the House of Possessions. While this speaks to that which we own, it's not limited simply to tangible things. We own our feelings and emotions, as well as our inner selves, abilities, needs and wants. When we own up to something, we are in fact claiming ownership of our greatest possession, our self. Using our possessions, including material goods, to maximum advantage is also within the realm of the Second House. Our possessions should enhance our lives and those of others in addition to fostering a general sense of well-being. This brings forth the concept of value which is key to the Second House. What do we value, both tangibly and intangibly? Why do we value it? Who do we value? What do we really own? What do we want to own? Why? Our effective resolution of these questions is a large part of what the Second House is all about. Specific possessions covered by the Second House include earned income and our ability to influence it, investments and moveable property (cars, clothing, jewelry and the like). Debt is also part of the equation here, since we own the responsibility to pay our bills. How we view money, the acquisition of wealth (and debt), financial reversals, savings, budgeting and financial status are all ruled by the Second House. For those of us who believe that money will set us free, it's interesting to note that this maxim finds a home in the Second House. Personal freedoms as established by financial capability and sensibility are addressed within this House. To a great extent, our possessions and what we do with them help to define us as viable human beings. Taking it a step further, will these material goods help us gain social standing, recognition, friendship and love? Used properly, they very well might. Therefore, the goal implicit in one's possessions could be defined as the ability to use those possessions honestly and to our best advantage and for the greater good. If our possessions work for us and those around us, what more could we ask? Well, one more question does come to mind: what goes around comes around? Sounds about right! The Second House is ruled by the Sign Taurus and the Planet Venus.