Astrology Research Articles

Medical Astrology in Hippocrates and Galen's Medical Works

In the pre-modern period, astrology has been the practice of relating celestial bodies to lives and events on earth and the resulting tradition. One aspect of astrology was based on the knowledge of astronomy and mathematical calculations, and the other aspect dealt with soothsaying. We can talk about two types of astrology: natural astrology and judicial astrology. Natural astrology has admitted the idea of celestial influences of a general nature, such as would affect the weather or the environment of a patient, and thus his chances of healing. Judicial astrology aims to determine the particular effects of the stellar influences on a specific person, with a view toward forecasting the future.
 But it is noteworthy that many sciences in the pre-modern period used astronomical results. Thus, understanding the knowledge related to climate, agriculture and medicine in the pre-modern era is not complete without understanding astrology. In this article, in the first part, we try to briefly describe astrology and its types and enumerate some features of medical astrology as part of natural astrology. In the second part, we will examine how astrology influenced the medical theories of Hippocrates and Galen in ancient Greece. And we show that medical astrology for them has been part of the natural process of explaining diseases and methods of prognosis and treatment and prevention.
 Our method in this article is the hermeneutic-based author understanding method. In other words, in this article, we do not use modern ideas about astrology, but try to examine medical astrology based on the natural and judicial astrology, which were expressed in the same pre-modern era. Thus, we show that astrology was not only an important science in its time, but was also related to the various sciences of its time, so that the understanding of knowledge related to medicine in the pre-modern would be incomplete without understanding astronomy.

When Missionary Astronomy Encountered Chinese Astrology: Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Chinese Calendar Reform in the Seventeenth Century

Western missionaries played an important role as go-betweens, promoting communication and interaction between Europe and China in science, culture, and religion. In 1644, the Qing government appointed the Germany Jesuit missionary Johann Adam Schall von Bell head of the Bureau of Astronomy, placing him in charge of reforming the Chinese calendar. In the traditional calendar, in addition to dates based on astronomical calculation, there were annotations attached to each day, which included auspicious and inauspicious days with advice on what to do in daily life according to Chinese astrology. Schall reformed the time arrangements with Western astronomical methods. However, he hoped to go further and proposed to change the annotations on the basis of Western natural astrology. Why did Schall choose to import Western astrology into Chinese astronomy, rather than simply sticking to astronomy? I argue that his views were influenced by both the attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church and the Aristotelianism scholarly tradition. The underlying tensions between Europe and China did not involve conflicts between science and pseudoscience, but between different religious beliefs, as well as different natural philosophies and cosmologies. The encounter of two radically different cultural traditions reflected the complicated relationship between science and belief from a global point of view.

Shlomo Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Introductions to Astrology. A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the Book of the Beginning of Wisdom and the Book of Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs, Brill, Leiden–Boston 2017.

Review of: Shlomo Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Introductions to Astrology. A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the Book of the Beginning of Wisdom and the Book of Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs, Brill, Leiden – Boston 2017 (Études Sur Le Judaïsme Médiéval, 69; Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Astrological Writings, 5), XIII + 822 pp., ISBN 9789004342279 (HBK), 9789004342286 (EBK).

Reconstructing Thomist astrology: Robert Bellarmine and the papal bull Coeli et terrae

ABSTRACTHistorians have portrayed the papal bull Coeli et terrae (1586) as a significant turning point in the history of the Catholic Church’s censorship of astrology. They argue that this bull was intended to prohibit the idea that the stars could naturally incline humans towards future actions, but also had the effect of preventing the discussion of other forms of natural astrology including those useful to medicine, agriculture, and navigation. The bull, therefore, threatened to overturn principles established by Thomas Aquinas, which not only justified long-standing astrological practices, but also informed the Roman Inquisition’s attitude towards this art. The promulgation of the bull has been attributed to the ‘rigour’ of the incumbent pope, Sixtus V. In this article I revise our understanding of this bull in two ways. First, I reconsider the Inquisition’s attitude towards astrology in the mid-sixteenth century, arguing that its members promoted a limited form of Thomist astrology that did not permit the doctrine of inclination. Second, using Robert Bellarmine’s unpublished lectures discussing Aquinas’s views of astrology, I suggest that this attitude was common during the sixteenth century, and may have been caused by the crisis of Renaissance astrology precipitated by the work of Giovanni Pico.

In Africano orbe quasi Roma. Mosaici dei mesi e autorappresentazione dell’aristocrazia romana a Cartagine tra IV e V sec. d.C.

The main characteristic of the so-called mosaics of months is the representation of the twelve months of the year through the images of astrological, religious and rural types that symbolize the eternal cycle of the time. The members of the roman upper class are the most frequent patrons of these illustrated calendars because they use them in order to communicate the ideas of Aeternitas and Felicitas temporum already employed by the Imperial propaganda to express the infinite authority and prosperity of the Roman Empire. Carthage is the second urban center after Rome with the greatest number of mosaics of months dated between the 4th and the 5th c. AD. The aim of this paper is to investigate the ideological and cultural use of these mosaics of months as means of self-representation of the power by the Late-Antique Carthaginian aristocracy.

Causes in Nature: Popular Astrology in King Lear

Causes in Nature: Popular Astrology in King Lear

Ibn Ezra on Astrology

Ibn Ezra on Astrology

Sobre los signos que indican los deseos amorosos: problemas de autoría en torno a un texto astrológico transmitido en el Comentario Anónimo al Tetrabiblos de Tolomeo

Al final del libro primero del Comentario Anónimo al Tetrabiblos de Tolomeo (Anon. in Ptol.), algunos manuscritos transmiten un texto titulado Sobre los signos que indican los deseos amorosos. Su primer parágrafo es el capítulo 27 de la traducción griega (ca. 1000 d.C.) de la Gran Introducción a la astrología de Abū Ma‘shar (787-886; en latín, Apomasar; en castellano, Albumasar). Pero la autoría de los parágrafos 2-7 resulta mucho más problemática, pues su rastro no aparece en la obra editada del astrólogo persa. A falta de una confirmación definitiva, que solo podrá venir de la edición del corpus completo de Abū Ma‘shar, en este artículo ofrecemos la primera edición crítica de ese texto, así como un análisis comparativo de sus tecnicismos y doctrina astrológica con pasajes paralelos encontrados en otras traducciones griegas del astrólogo persa realizadas en Bizancio.

Galileo as Practising Astrologer

Galileo as Practising Astrologer

Claude Gadroys and a Cartesian Astrology

Claude Gadroys and a Cartesian Astrology

Astrologie alchemiche: Ermetismi in transizione e culture occidentali

Alchemy is the “sacred art” of the transmutation of metals or human beings, and often these two tendencies are expressed together in an allegorical mode infused with an astrological imager reflecting their mystical nature. The astrology is bound to alchemy in the search for the most favorable moment for commencing an enterprise (catarchic astrology) or in the form of the interrogational method, in which the horoscope of the precise moment at which a query is made to the astrologer is interpreted to provide an answer. Finally, the article illustrates these themes in some ancient manuscripts from Turin’s National University Library.

Arcana of the Magus of Lunar Magnetism in the Life of a Native

Lunar Magnetism which seem to greatly influence the various stages of a native such as female menstrual cycle, ovulation, fertilisation, formation of zygote, development into embryo, foetus, childbirth and all stages of life of the native to the point of termination of mundane existence corroborates with Vedic Astrology and Seymour’s findings of the resemblance between Gauquelin's four-pronged pattern for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon and the pattern for the monthly average of the lunar daily magnetic variationis discussed in this paper.

Kritika některých aspektů díla K. R. Poppera ve vztahu k demarkačnímu problému

V úvodní části zrekapitulujeme v hrubých obrysech Popperovu teorii demarkace v návaznosti na jeho další teze týkající se kritiky induktivních postupů, úlohy metafyziky ve vědě a falzifikaci. Dílo vídeňského filozofa vyvolalo značné množství reakcí, jejichž spektrum sahalo od dílčích modifikací Popperových myšlenek jeho žáky, přes návrhy nových teorií jím inspirovaných, až po zásadní kritiku. Hlavní směry této kritiky načrtneme (bez nároku na úplnost) v další části statě. Polemizujeme především s jednostranným odmítnutím indukce a pokoušíme se zde rehabilitovat některé induktivní postupy. Následně upozorníme na nedostatky Popperova pojetí falzifikace i na problémy použitelnosti jeho demarkačního kritéria na typických příkladech ze sféry metafyziky a "pseudovědy" (psychoanalýza, astrologie). Závěr věnujeme diskuzi o úloze indukce a dedukce ve vědě, posouzení užitečnosti Popperových teorií ve vztahu k současné vědě.

The Church of the Deans

The article investigates the ways through which peculiar representations of the late Ancient World passed to the Middle Ages. Among them, the astrological discipline is one of the favorite vehicles. The sculptures and other decorations of the Romanesque churches, have rewritten this archaic knowledge in the context of the Christian faith. Another constant presence in the imaginary of Western Christianity are the fabulous creatures related to what in astrology are the Decans. These odd Egyptian deities had at some time before the sixth century of our era made the long voyage to India and back they had travelled to Islamic lands, and so finally returned to Byzantium and the West.

A RESEARCH ON ARCHITECTURAL RULES AND CRITERIONS OF SELECTING SUITABLE PLACE FOR OBSERVATORY

The observatory for ancient Iranian people was mainly a tool for determining the time or direction of sun for calculating their year and month, so that when we examine the valuable structure of Persepolis from astrological point of view, in the most ancient part of this structure where Daryoush ordered to the build the first conference hall in 58 years B.C. was the place for visiting the first radiation of sun on morning of the first day of Farvardin (Mar 21st). The main purpose of the present research is to remembering the enriched past history of Iran in the field of astrology and related events. Moreover, through library and field studies, some criterions are obtained for improving public information in relation to space and surround environment. Designing the astrological centers plays key role for scientific growth and development of our country and returning the lost capitals and verification of scientific authority.

A Study on the Astrological Meanings of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms ― Taking Example for Astrology on Death

A Study on the Astrological Meanings of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms ― Taking Example for Astrology on Death

Monica Azzolini. The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan.

Monica Azzolini. The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan.

Dante Alighieri's Quaestio de Aqua et Terra in the Renaissance

This paper analyzes Dante Alighieri’s astrological response, in his Quaestio de aqua et terra (1320), to the dilemma posed by Aristotelian cosmology regarding the existence of dry earth over watery surface in the system of concentric elemental spheres. Considering that this Treatise was known only in early 16 Century, this work takes into account both the cultural context in which it was received and the Renaissance conceptions on the stellar argument put forward by medieval tradition, proposing from such evidence an interpretation of the scarce spreading of Dante’s propositions.

Antonio Panaino. Sasanian Astronomy and Astrology in the Contribution of David Pingree

Dans le domaine de l’astronomie et l’astrologie, l’Iran pre-islamique, notamment sassanide, a integre et retravaille diverses doctrines etrangeres et les a transmises au monde islamique et a l’Occident. Cet apport de l’Iran a l’histoire du savoir n’aurait pas ete percu a sa juste valeur sans la contribution des travaux du regrette David Pingree. Connaisseur de sources grecques, babyloniennes, et en particulier indiennes, ses analyses ont ete decisives pour determiner une serie de sujets relat...

Sreeramula R. Sarma. Persian-Sanskrit Lexica and the Dissemination of Islamic Astronomy and Astrology and India

Les dictionnaires bilingues persan-sanskrit, relativement nombreux, existaient deja avant le sultanat de Delhi, sur la cote ouest de l’Inde, grâce aux contacts des milieux jaina avec les musulmans. Akbar ayant designe des hindous comme astronomes royaux, les cours mogholes sont a l’origine des lexiques persan-sanskrit portant egalement sur l’astronomie et l’astrologie, et importants, entre autres, pour la connaissance du calendrier, des elections (periodes propices ou nefastes), du vocabulair...