The History of Astrology

The" objective of this volume is to summarize briefly the historical vicissitudes of astrology. Astrology swept into Greece despite opposition and then declined because of early Christian opposition and apathy. After the Revival of Learning in the tenth and eleventhcenturies all opposition to astrology proved futile. Neither faith nor an organized church was able to advance or retract the belief patterns of mankind. In the Christian world of the west, astrology reached its greatest peak at the precise time when the Church was in power. Apparently love of the new learning and the impact of fashion proved stronger within the minds of the very supporters and rulers of the Church than did the inherited prejudices against the often materialistic and deterministic first science.

Astrology’s second decline was in the seventeenth century and occurred for entirely different reasons than its first fall in the fouxdy century or thereabouts. The force that obscured or repressed astrology earlier was mankind’s absorption with religious values, while the force that caused astrology’s fall in the later period was the enthusiastic absorption with the newly won scientific method.

Man has always wanted to know and understand the world about him. That world affected him in many ways and invariably left strong, emotional, and indelible imprints on his mind—some because they determined his fate or well-being, such as fire, flood, defeat, crop failure, disease, or misfortune; others because they impressed him and he believed they were vital to his life and welfare, as for example, comets, eclipses, or planetary conjunctions. All these aspects of Nature he set out to observe and study, and to devise theories for the coordination and interpretation of the data.