Marriage and divorce of astronomy and astrology : a history of astral prediction from antiquity to Newton

247 Pages·0.844 MB·English

by  Gordon Fisher

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY 1
OF ASTRAL PREDICTION FOR ANTIQUITYOF NEWTON

Marriage and Divorce of Astronomy and
Astrology
History of Astral Prediction from
Antiquity to Newton

by

Gordon Fisher
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY 2
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Contents
Chapter 1. Some Sources of Astral Beliefs
Chapter 2. From Astral Beliefs to Kepler, Fludd and
Newton
Appendix: Newton’s Laws
Chapter 3. Some Astrological Techniques
Chapter 4. From Babylon to Copernicus
Chapter 5. Stoics, Kepler and Evaluations
Chapter 6. Earlier Christians and Astrology
Chapter 7. From Ptolemy to Newton
Chapter 8. Updates and Addenda
Chapter 9. Pierre d'Ailly and Newton again
Chapter 10. John Dee and Astrological Physics

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Chapter 1. Some Sources of Astral Beliefs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Even a god cannot change the past.”
--- Agathon, born c. 445 BC
"It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians
can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He
tolerates their existence.”
--- Samuel Butler, Erewhon Revisited, 1901

1. The heavens—the physical ones—were for a long time
regarded as the locus of divinity by many people, and a source of what
takes place on earth. In his On the Heavens, Aristotle says there is
something beyond the bodies which are on earth, different and separate
from them, and the glory of this something grows greater as its distance
from this world of ours increases. The primary body, at the greatest
distance from earth, is eternal and unchanging. For, Aristotle says, surely
there are gods, and they are immortal, and everyone agrees they are
located in the highest place in the universe. The evidence of our senses
tells us, at least with the certainty attainable by humans, that in the past, as
far as our records reach, no change has taken place in the outermost
heavens. So the primary body is something beyond earth, air, fire and
water. We call it the aether, Aristotle says, because it runs forever.
(Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), De caelo (On the Heavens), 269b12-16, 270b1-
23, translated by J. L. Stocks.)
2. Aristotle based his theory on the evidence of our senses. He
says phenomena confirm his theory. He also says his theory confirms the
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY 4
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phenomena. That is, predictions made with his theory were verified by
observation. He had an empirically based procedure, contrary to what
some have said. His failures are often due to lack of information, or
incorrect interpretation of it; to phenomena unnoticed, or not examined
closely enough; to new stars (if any were known to him) and comets
interpreted as being relatively near, perhaps because they showed change;
to insufficient knowledge of the chemical constitution of matter; and so
on. That celestial objects are alive wasn't a bad conjecture in the context
of what was known, since they appear to be self-moving. This seems
obviously to be a characteristic of living entities. That the celestial objects
are divine wasn't too bad a conjecture, either, given their overall regularity
and permanence, over periods of time which are very long relative to
human lives.
3. When Aristotle associates the divine with the outer heavens, he
doesn't actually say the outer heavens or the stars are gods. He says they
are like gods by virtue of their unchanging nature. On earth, change is
everywhere. The living are born or sprout, are transformed or transform
themselves, and die. Ores in the earth can be changed to metals, metals
rust. Mountains explode or wear down. Waters flood or dry up, spring
from the earth or fall from above; when boiled they shrink and turn into a
small residue of minerals; when frozen they turn to transparent "earth"
(that is, to one of the four basic elements in the theory of Empedocles and
Aristotle). And so on. Only the stars appear permanent and unchanging.
But are there any bodies which last forever in one form? Those who
believe there are immortal gods, says Aristotle, may be prepared to believe
this too, and that the planets and stars are such bodies.
4. The divinity and regularity of the movements of the sun, moon,
planets and stars were taken as evidence that these celestial objects
regulated or at least influenced various kinds of changes on earth. The
objects were considered by some to be quite tyrannical, and to dictate
events on earth. But this autocracy let one make predictions about events
on earth. If everything is dictated in advance, then it is reasonable to try to
find out in advance what will happen. Success of prediction depends on
events being completely or partly determined in advance of their
happening. There grew up an association of the divinity and the regularity
of celestial objects with astral determinism, the doctrine that some, at
least, of the myriad changes on earth are dictated by the stars and planets.
This, in turn, is associated with the problem of determinism in general.
Crudely, the problem is to decide whether or not everything that happens
is in some way determined in advance. This seems to be true of the
movements of the celestial objects themselves. The question is, how much
of the change on earth and in the heavens is determined in advance, and
what kind of changes are involved?
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY 5
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5. Connections between religion, astronomy, astrology and
prediction are very ancient, probably prehistoric. In The Etruscans Begin
to Speak, Zaharie Mayani describes a relatively late ceremony which
unites the three. His description is based on a fresco on the wall of a
tomb, known as the Tomb of the Augurs, which dates from 530 B.C. Two
priests are seen marking out the bounds of a holy area consisting of a
square in which two medians were marked, one running from north to
south and the other from east to west. The quarters of the square are also
subdivided, and each resulting section is assigned to a particular deity.
The square is a kind of mirror of the heavens, since the divisions of the
square correspond to a conceptual division of the sky. A priest could
stand in the center of the square and with the help of a special staff
determine in which zone of the square the direction of a celestial omen
fell, hence which deity was sending the omen. Thus the holy area or
templum constituted an observatory for determining positions of omens
which could be used for predicting future events. The observations were a
means of learning the will of the gods. (Zaharie Mayani, The Etruscans
Begin to Speak, translation by Patrick Evans, 1962, of Les Étrusques
commençent parler, 1961, p. 222-224.)
6. Another example, from David Chandler, A History of
Cambodia, Westview Press (HarperCollins), 2nd edn updated, 1996, p. 51-
52: "In the mid-1970s …. Eleanor Moron began studying the dimensions
of the temple [at Angkor Wat] in detail, convinced that these might
contain the key to the way the temple had been encoded by the savants
who designed it. After determining that the Cambodian measurement
used at Angkor, the hat, was equivalent to approximately 0.4 meters (1.3
feet), Moron went on to ask how many hat were involved in significant
dimenstions of the temple, such as the distance between the western
entrance (the only one equipped with its own causeway) and the central
tower. The distance came to 1,728 hat, and three other components of this
axis measured, respectively, 1,296, 867, and 439 hat. oron then argued
that these figures correlated to the four “ages,” or yugaa, of Indian
thought. The first of these, the Krita Yuga, was a supposedly golden age,
lasting 1,728,000 years. The next three ages lasted for 1,296,000,
864,000, and 432,000 years, respectively. The earliest age, therefore, was
four times longer than the latest, the second earliest, twice as long. The
last age is the Kali Yuga, in which we are living today. At the end of this
era, it is believed, the universe will be destroyed, to be rebuilt by Brahman
along similar lines, beginning with another golden age. "The fact that the
length of these four eras correlates exactly with particular distances along
the east-west axis of Angkor Wat suggests that the “code” for the temple
is in fact a kind of pun that can be read in terms of time and space. The
distances that a person entering the temple will traverse coincide with the
eras that the visitor is metaphorically living through en route to the statue
of Vishnu in the central tower. Waling forward and away from the west,
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY 6
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which is the direction of death, the visitor moves backward into time,
approaching the moment when the Indians proposed that time began. "In
her research, Moron also discovered astronomical correlations for ten of
the most frequently occurring distances at Angkor Wat. Astronomers
working with her found that the siting of the temple was related to the fact
that its western gate aligned at sunrise with aa small hill to the northeast,
Phnom Bok. Moreover, at the summer solstice “an observer …. standing
just in front of the western entrance can see the sunrise directly over the
central tower of Angkor Wat.” This day, June 21, marked the beginning
of the solar year for Indian astronomers and was sacred to a king whose
name, Suryavarman, means “protected by the sun” and who was a devotee
of Vishnu [this king, who was a devotee of Vishnu, commissioned the
building of Angkor Wat]. "The close fit of these spatial relationships to
notions of cosmic time, and the extraordinary accuracy and symmetry of
all the measurements at Angkor, combine to confirm the notion that the
temple was in fact a coded religious text that could be read by experts
moving along the walkways from one dimension to the next. The learned
pandits who determined the dimensions of Angkor Wat would have been
aware of and would have reveled in its multiplicity of meanings. To those
lower down in the society, perhaps, fewer and fewer meanings would be
clear. We can assume, however, that even the poorest slaves were
astonished to see this enormous temple, probably with gilded towers rising
60 meters (200 feet) above the ground and above the thatched huts of the
people who had built it.”<![endif]>
7. This lining up of temples could serve utilitarian purposes. Ernst
Zinner reports that temples were aligned by the ancient Egyptians so they
could be used as star clocks. Sun clocks were used for daytime
measurement, and the Egyptians had water clocks which could be used
day or night. However, they also determined the hours of the night by
noting when certain constellations reached their highest point in the sky.
In order to determine these zeniths, it was necessary to known where the
meridian was. "This presented no difficulty for the Egyptians," says
Zinner, "since the determination of the north-south and east-west
directions at the laying of the foundation-stone of a temple was among the
most important functions of the king. The process of determining these
directions was depicted in exactly the same way on reliefs from the 4th
millenium up to the birth of Christ." (Ernst Zimmer, Die Geschichte der
Sternkunde, von den ersten Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 1931, p. 12.)
The measuring apparatus used by the king consisted of a straight edge (an
alignment stick) bent upward at one end and with a plumb line attached,
together with the split rib of a palm leaf. There are tables found in the
burial chambers of the pharaohs Ramses VI and IX dating from between
about 1160 and 1120 B.C. which list what constellations correspond to
what hour of the night, and show a picture of a sitting man. The process
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of observing the passage of the hours of the night required two such
observers, aligned along the meridian.
8. These examples show ways stars were connected to prediction
and time-keeping. People have tried to predict the future in many ways
besides observing stars. To take an exotic case, Seneca says of the
Etruscans that they were consummately skilled in foretelling future events
by interpreting lightning. We (the Romans), Seneca says, think that
because clouds collide, lightning is emitted; they (the Etruscans) think the
clouds collide so lightning will be emitted. Thus the gods can send
messages to humans about what is destined to happen. (Seneca,
Questiones naturales (about 62 A.D.), II.32, translated by Thomas
Corcoran, 1971, v. 1, p. 150-151.)
9. Sometimes visions of the future were read in bowls of water. E.
R. Dodds speaks of this use of scrying, as it is sometimes called, for
precognition. This is future-telling carried out by staring into a translucent
or shining object, called a speculum, until a moving vision or hallucination
is produced which seems to come from within the object. It is dsaid that
only a small proportion of people will be able to see such pictures. In
modern times, the process is best known as crystal-gazing, but it can be
carried out with other objects besides crystals. Crystals don't seem to have
been used as specula before Byzantine times, but the practice of scrying is
much older. In one ancient method, a mirror was used as a speculum;
catoptromancy is divination using a mirror or other reflecting object. (A.
Delatte, La catoptromancie grecque et ses derivés, 1932.)
10. In another ancient method, used more frequently as time went
on, the speculum was simply a bowl of water. Sometimes a film of oil
(occasionally, flour) was spread on the surface of the water. This method
was known as lecanomancy, literally "divination by bowl". The Greeks
and Romans got this method from the Middle East, where it had a long
history. It appears to have developed from a method in which events were
foretold by spreading oil on water, and interpreting the moving shapes
formed by the oil. Evidently prolonged staring at the shapes led to visions
in some seers, and eventually the visions in the seers became more
important than the shapes in the oil. It was realized that visions could be
induced just by staring into the water, without the oil. However, the oil
was sometimes still used, presumably because it was traditional or because
it increased luminosity. The Greeks and Romans took up the practice in
the 1st century B.C. or earlier, probably importing it from Egypt. By this
time, the use of oil seems to have been abandoned. (E. R. Dodds,
"Supernormal Phenomena in Classical Antiquity", in The Ancient Concept
of Progress, and other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief, 1973, p.
186-188).
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY HISTORY 8
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11. The most direct way to know the future is by means of
revelation. Among the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians (and others),
this was often taken to happen in dreams. A god appeared in a "night
vision" and clearly predicted the future or gave commands. Sometimes,
though, the dream was mysterious, and had to be interpreted. Besides the
interpretation of dreams, therewere methods of divination based on
observations of the births of humans, sheep and other animals, especially
abnormal and monstrous births. There were techniques based on
observations of involuntary facial movements of people, and on
physiognomy, the features of people's faces and skulls. In another popular
method, the diviner read the entrails of animals killed or sacrificed. With
entrails in general, the method was known as extispicy or haruspicy, and
with livers, hepatoscopy. (Édouard Dhorme, Les Religions de Babylonie et
d'Assyrie, 1949, p. 276-281.)
12. Divination no doubt has its sources in basic features of animal
behavior and learning. It is natural for animals to make projections.
Specific expectations are linked to specific observations. Signs are
recognized. Among humans, signs of future events or processes may be
described with language, and transmitted from person to person. The use
of such signs can be very helpful in making decisions, and for overcoming
indecisiveness. In favorable cases, such signs are always or very
frequently followed by the signified, and may indicate caused events.
Occasional failures may be attributed to faulty observation or
interpretation of the sign, to intervention of external powers, to chance,
etc. A preponderance of failures may, or may not, lead to alteration in
interpretation of the signs, or even abandonment of a project to use such
signs for projections and predictions.
13. Certain decisions based on chance are a kind of limiting case
of decisions based on signs. Gamblers, for example, read thrown dice,
flipped coins, dealt cards, etc., and make decisions based on their readings
about who gets to possess certain amounts of money. The signs in this
case—the numbers on the dice, etc.—cause the the money to be
distributed in this or that way in some sense of "cause", but not, it seems,
in the sense we use when we say the earth causes an eclipse of the moon
when it gets between the moon and the earth. A person who makes
investments on the stock market according to hunches (which, I'm taking
it, are kinds of signs) may be gambling in the same way as people who
play roulette, depending on the source of the hunches. If the hunches are
based in some way, perhaps unconsciously, on actual economic trends, the
investor's chances of profiting are better than if they are not. Inside
traders (those who use information about future financial transactions
illegally) read signs of a kind which reduces their chances of loss
considerably—unless they're caught at it. We can only conjecture about
how many important political, military and business decisions have been
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made by flipping a coin, or—sometimes reducing the chances of failure to
some degree—on the basis of probabilities drawn up by statisticians,
engineers or managers.
14. One motive for wanting to predict the future is the removal of
anxiety, temporary though it may be. It can be very consoling to decide
one knows in advance what an outcome will be. Even if the decision
proves to have been wrong, the previous peace of mind will not be taken
away. Nancy Reagan, wife of the former U.S. president Ronald Reagan,
says in her memoirs, regarding her use of astrology to make schedules for
the president: "Astrology was simply one of the ways I coped with the
fear I felt after my husband almost died" (referring to the assassination
attempt of March 30, 1981). Speaking of an astrologer she consulted,
Joan Quigley, Nancy says: "Joan's recommendations had nothing to do
with policy or politics—ever. Her advice was confined to timing -- to
Ronnie's schedule, and to what days were good or bad, especially with
regard to his out-of-town trips." (Of course, timing is a part of politics.)
"While I was never certain," says Nancy, "that Joan's astrological advice
was helping to protect Ronnie, the fact is that nothing like March 30 ever
happened again. Was astrology one of the reasons? I don't really believe
it was, but I don't really believe it wasn't. But I do know this: it didn't
hurt, and I'm not sorry I did it." (Nancy Reagan, with William Novak, My
Turn, The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan, 1989, p. 44, 47, 49.)
15. One can, of course, have faith in signs of this sort without
attributing religious significance to them. But, as Walter Burkert tells us,
in ancient cultures signs about the future—omens—were often considered
to come from gods. The gods use signs, clear or cryptic, to give orders
and guidance to men. Among the classical Greeks and Romans, who had
no written scriptures, signs were a principal way for gods to communicate
with men. Thus among the Greeks, someone who doubted theefficacy of
divination was liable to be suspected of impiety or godlessness. All of the
Greek gods dispense signs, and especially the king of them all, Zeus. The
ability to interpret divine signs requires special inspiration, and this ability
is dispensed by Apollo, the son of Zeus.
16. Among the classical Greeks, a specialist in interpreting signs
was a seer, a mantis, someone who makes contact with the gods. The
word for god, theos, is closely related to the art of the seer. A seer is a
theopropos, one able to sense—see or hear—the gods. An uninterpreted
sign is a thesphaton, a saying or command of the gods. What a seer
performs is a theiazein or entheazein, an act inspired by the gods. In the
Iliad, the seer Kalchas is the son of Thestor. In the Odyssey, the seer with
second sight is Theoklymenos, and the tribe which guards the Oracle of
the Dead in Epirus is called the Thesprotoi, the see-ers of the gods. A seer
may speak in an abnormal state—the word mantis for seer is related to
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mania, madness—so an interpreter of the words of a seer, a prophetes,
may be required. Thus the art of interpretation becomes a more or less
rational technique, even when the words of the seer—hence of the gods—
are cryptic. (Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, translation of Griechische
Religion der archaischen und klasischen Epoche, 1977, by John Raffan,
1985, p. 111-114.)
17. Any abnormal occurrence which can't be manipulated could
become a sign for the ancient seers: a dream, a sudden sneeze, a stumble,
a twitch, a chance encounter, the sound of a name caught in passing,
celestial phenomena such as lightning, comets, shooting stars, eclipses of
sun or moon, even a drop of rain. We see here a kind of border zone
between divination, and scientific psychology, meteorology and
astronomy. The observation of the flight of birds played a special role in
Greek prediction, perhaps from a prehistoric Indo-European tradition. In
sacrifices, everything is a sign: whether the animal goes willingly to the
altar and bleeds to death quickly, whether or not the fire flares swiftly,
what happens when parts of the animal are burned in the fire, how the tail
curls and the bladder bursts. The inspection of the livers of the victims
developed into a special art: how the various lobes are formed and
colored was evaluated at every stage of slaughter. This technique appears
to have been transmitted from Mesopotamia, probably in the 8th or 7th
century B.C. There is an allusion to the practice by Homer. The
Etruscans obtained their much more detailed haruspicina (as these gut
omens were called) from the same source, not via the Greeks. The
inspection of entrails was the prime task of the seers who accompanied
armies into battle. Herds of sacrificial victims were driven along with the
armies, although the animals were also used for food. Without favorable
signs no battle was joined. Before the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.), the
Greeks and Persians stayed encamped opposite each other for ten days
because the omens didn't advise either side to attack. (Burkert, ibid.)
18. The philosophical question as to how omens,
predetermination, and freedom of the will can be reconciled began to be
discussed extensively in Hellenistic times. The discover of natural laws in
the sphere of astronomy acted as a catalyst in this discussion, and at the
same time produced a new and enormously influential form of divination
in the shapes and forms of astrology. Earlier, one could always try to
avoid the outcomes predicted by unfavorable signs by waiting and hoping
the outcome would not occur after all, or by acting or not acting in ways
which lead to circumvention, or by performing purification, or by praying,
etc. But according to most astrological beliefs, outcomes necessarily
follow their astrological signs at least to some degree, or at least for events
of some kinds. In other methods of prediction, it was frequently important
that even favorable omens be accepted with an approving word or vow to
the gods in order for them to achieve their fullest efficacy, but it was often
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