Category: Astrology

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The study of nature was pursued more for practical reasons

The study of nature, including observations of the sky, though not a higher calling, was important for practical reasons.

“The study of nature was pursued more for practical reasons than as an abstract inquiry: the need to care for the sick led to the study of medicine and of ancient texts on drugs, the need for monks to determine the proper time to pray led them to study the motion of the stars, the need to compute the date of Easter led them to study and teach rudimentary mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon.

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Middle_Ages>”

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Portrait of Nicole Oresme, Thinker

Portrait of Nicole Oresme: Miniature from Oresme’s Traité de l’espere, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France, fonds français 565, fol. 1r.


Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresme>

“Nicole Oresme c. 1320–1325 – July 11, 1382) was a significant philosopher of the later Middle Ages. He wrote influential works on economics, mathematics, physics, astrology and astronomy, philosophy, and theology; was Bishop of Lisieux, a translator, a counselor of King Charles V of France, and probably one of the most original thinkers of the 14th century.”
Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Oresme>

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From the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

From the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out of the same Door as in I went.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour’d it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d –
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help – for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.



Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m>

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Go down, sit in the dust, Virgin Daughter Babylon.

Isaiah 47 (New International Version (NIV))
The Fall of Babylon

God/Isaiah is is speaking to the Babylonians who captured the Jews and forced them into exile for sixty years (The Babylonian Captivity from 597-539BCE). Soon Cyrus will come to save them. But in a sense, it will be too late. The Babylonians took the elite of Israel into their own city as hostages, to be used and to be assimilated. When they returned to Jerusalem, they returned with adopted myths and magic. Christianity contains elements of the the Babylonian culture and of other cultures which passed through the Middle East – the Jews, of course, the Egyptians, and the Greeks among others (though degree and direction of influences are debated). The occult arts of the region of the Babylonians were highly regarded and influential in Europe in later centuries.

“(5.) Sit in silence, go into darkness,
queen city of the Babylonians;
no more will you be called
queen of kingdoms.

I was angry with my people
and desecrated my inheritance;
I gave them into your hand,
and you showed them no mercy.

Even on the aged
you laid a very heavy yoke.

You said, ‘I am forever—
the eternal queen!’
But you did not consider these things
or reflect on what might happen.

…

“(12.) Keep on, then, with your magic spells
and with your many sorceries,
which you have labored at since childhood.

Perhaps you will succeed,
perhaps you will cause terror.

All the counsel you have received has only worn you out!
Let your astrologers come forward,

those stargazers who make predictions month by month,
let them save you from what is coming upon you.

Surely they are like stubble;
the fire will burn them up.

They cannot even save themselves
from the power of the flame.

These are not coals for warmth;
this is not a fire to sit by.

That is all they are to you—
these you have dealt with
and labored with since childhood.

All of them go on in their error;
there is not one that can save you. “

Pasted from <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+47&version=NIV>

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What is my disease?

From “The Casebooks Project”

The website provides access to the case history books of two of England’s most active and prominent professional astrologers of the late 16th/early seventeenth century, beginning three years after the death of Marlowe:

“What is my disease? Am I pregnant? Will I die? These are the sorts of questions that thousands of people asked Simon Forman and Richard Napier, two of the most popular astrologers in early modern England. Through four busy decades, Forman and Napier recorded more than 50,000 consultations. Their casebooks are probably the richest surviving records of medical practice before 1700. They provide a unique view of the lives of ordinary — and extraordinary — people four centuries ago. Our freely available electronic edition will combine sophisticated editorial expertise and cutting-edge digital humanities to make these records accessible as never before.”



See <https://casebooks.lib.cam.ac.uk/>





Simon Forman in http://books.google.com/books?id=S7U_AAAAcAAJ&dq=Simon William Lilly’s history of his life and times from the year 1602 to 1681, by William Lilly.

(Astrology in those times

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Arab astronomers from the eleventh to the fourteenth century established

“Arab astronomers from the eleventh to the fourteenth century established a broad-based research tradition aimed at reforming the Ptolemaic (geocentric) planetary model. These astronomers—in both Eastern and Western Islam—wanted a theoretical planetary model that conformed to what really is. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the combined efforts of the Marâgha School of astronomers, capped by the work of Ibn al-Shatir, finally arrived at a planetary model mathematically equivalent to the Copernican model of a century and a half later. But having arrived there, Ibn al-Shatir and his successors failed to make the leap to the heliocentric view—the leap that distinguished the Copernican achievement—and thereby failed to achieve the philosophical and metaphysical transformation that we call the scientific revolution.”

Pasted from <http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/decline_of_the_decline_of_arabic_science/>

(This is actually a quote from another article:

Toby E. Huff, The rise of early modern science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 87.)

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Astrology – Another Excerpt from The Faust Book

Another Excerpt from The Faust Book. Faust explains the true nature of the stars.

“The Faust Book seems to be a very early novel written during the Lutheran church squabbles (1568-81) or shortly thereafter. It comes down to us in manuscript (Historia vnd Geschicht Doctor Johannis Faustj des Zauberers) written in clear hand by a professional scribe in Nuremberg, still in very good, unused condition, and also as a 1587 imprint from the prominent Frankfurt publishing house of Johann Spies.”

Pasted from <http://lettersfromthedustbowl.com/msE.html>

Concerning the Stars
XIX
“A prominent scholar in Halberstadt, Doctor N. V. W., invited Doctor Faustus to his table. Before supper was ready, Faustus stood for a while gazing out the window at the Heavens, it being Harvest time and the sky filled with stars. Now his host, being also a Doctor of Physic and a good astrologus, had brought Doctor Faustus here for the purpose of learning from him divers transformations in the planets and stars. Therefore he now leaned upon the window beside Doctor Faustus and looked also upon the brilliance of the Heavens, the multitude of stars, some of which were shooting through the sky and falling to the earth. In all humility he made request that Doctor Faustus might tell him the condition and quality of this thing.
Doctor Faustus began on this wise: My most dear Lord and Brother, this condition doth presuppose certain other matters which ye must understand first. The smallest star in Heaven, although when beheld from below it seems to our thinking scarcely so big as our large wax candles, is really larger than a principality. Oh yes, this is certain. I have seen that the length and breadth of the Heavens is many times greater than the surface of the earth. From Heaven, ye cannot even see earth. Many a star is broader than this land, and most are at least as large as this city. –See, over there is one fully as large as the dominion of the Roman Empire. This one right up here is as large as Turkey. And up higher there, where the planets are, ye may find one as big as the world.”
Pasted from <http://lettersfromthedustbowl.com/Fbk2.html>

The Third Question
XXII
“But I still do not understand, spake the Doctor from Halberstadt, the action of the stars, how they glitter, and how they fall down to earth.
Doctor Faustus answered: This is nothing out of the ordinary, but an everyday happening. It is indeed true that the stars, like the Firmament and other Elementa, were created and disposed in the Heavens in such a fashion that they are immutable. But they do undergo certain changes in color and in other external qualities. The stars manifest superficial changes of this sort when they give off sparks or little flames, for these are bits of match falling from the stars–or, as we call them, shooting stars. They are hard, black, and greenish.
But that a star itself might fall–why this is nothing more than a fancy of mankind. When by night a great streak of fire is seen to shoot downward, these are not falling stars, although we do call them that, but only slaggy pieces from the stars. They are big things, to be sure, and, as is true of the stars themselves, some are much bigger than others. But it is my opinion that no star itself falleth except as a scourge of God. Then such falling stars bring a murkiness of the Heavens with them and cause great floods and devastation of lives and land. “
Pasted from <http://lettersfromthedustbowl.com/Fbk2.html>”

Check out http://lettersfromthedustbowl.com/Fbk2.html.

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Astrology – An Excerpt from The Faust Book

An Excerpt from The Faust Book

“The Faust Book seems to be a very early novel written during the Lutheran church squabbles (1568-81) or shortly thereafter. It comes down to us in manuscript(Historia vnd Geschicht Doctor Johannis Faustj des Zauberers) written in clear hand by a professional scribe in Nuremberg, still in very good, unused condition, and also as a 1587 imprint from the prominent Frankfurt publishing house of Johann Spies. “
Pasted from <http://lettersfromthedustbowl.com/msE.html>

DOCTOR FAUSTUS HIS HISTORIA
HERE FOLLOWETH THE SECOND
PART ADVENTURES & SUNDRY
QUESTIONS
His Almanacs and Horoscopes
XII

“Doctor Faustus, being no longer able to obtain answers from his spirit concerning godly matters, now had to rest content and desist from this purpose. It was in those days that he set about making almanacs and became a good astronomus and astrologus.

He gained so much learning and experience from the spirit concerning horoscopes that all which he did contrive and write won the highest praise among all the mathematici of that day (as is, after all, common knowledge by now). His horoscopes, which he sent to great lords and princes, always were correct, for he contrived them according to the advice of his spirit as to what would come to pass in the future, all such matters falling duly out even as he had presaged them.

His tables and almanacs were praised above others because he set down naught in them but what did indeed come to pass. When he forecast fogs, wind, snow, precipitation, etc., these things were all quite certain. His almanacs were not as those of some unskilled astrologi who know of course that it gets cold in the winter, and hence forecast freezes, or that it will be hot in the summer, and predict thunderstorms. Doctor Faustus always calculated his tables in the manner described above, setting what should come to pass, specifying the day and the hour and especially warning the particular districts–this one with famine, that one with war, another with pestilence, and so forth.”

A Disputatio, or Inquiry Concerning the Art of Astronomia, or Astrologia
XIII
“One time after Doctor Faustus had been contriving and producing such horoscopes and almanacs for about two years he did ask his spirit about the nature of astronomia or astrologia as practiced by the mathematici.

The spirit gave answer, saying: My Lord Fauste, it is so ordained that the ancient haruspices and modern stargazers are unable to forecast anything particularly certain, for these are deep mysteries of God which mortals cannot plumb as we spirits can, who hover in the air beneath Heaven where we can see and mark what God bath predestined. Yes, we are ancient spirits, experienced in the Heavenly movements. Why, Lord Fauste, I could make thee a perpetual calendar for the setting of horoscopes and almanacs or for nativity investigations one year after the other. –Thou hast seen that I have never lied to thee. Now it is true that the Patriarchs, who lived for five and six hundred years, did comprehend the fundamentals of this art and became very adept. For when such a great number of years elapse a lunisolar period is completed, and the older generation can apprise the younger of it. Except for that, all green, inexperienced astrologi have to set up their horoscopes arbitrarily according to conjecture.”

Pasted from <http://lettersfromthedustbowl.com/Fbk2.html>

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Synchronicity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

“Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events, that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner. The concept of synchronicity was first described by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung in the 1920s.

The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by their meaning. Since meaning is a complex mental construction, subject to conscious and unconscious influence, not every correlation in the grouping of events by meaning needs to have an explanation in terms of cause and effect.”

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity>

Synchronicity is also the title of an album by The Police and includes a song (“Wrapped Around Your Finger”) by Sting with the verse:

“Mephistopheles is not your name,
But I know what you’re up to just the same.
I will listen hard to your tuition,
And you will see it come to its fruition.

(Copyright: Emi Blackwood Music Inc. O.B.O. Magnetic Publishing Ltd. )

Pasted from <http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/police/wrappedaroundyourfinger.html>

According to Wikipedia:

“The album’s title was inspired by Arthur Koestler’s The Roots of Coincidence, which mentions Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity. Sting was an avid reader of Koestler, and also named Ghost in the Machine after one of his works.”
Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity_(The_Police_album)>

From Carl Jung himself:

“It seems to me that one cannot meditate enough about Faust, for many of the mysteries of the second part are still unfathomed. Faust is out of this world and therefore it transports you; it is as much the future as the past and therefore the most living present. Hence everything that to me is essential in Goethe is contained in Faust.
Yours sincerely, C. C. JUNG ”
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950. By C. G. Jung

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The superstitious credulity of the age in which they lived

[Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II – a great and important Renaissance patron and follower of the occult arts, including astrology and alchemy, but a poor ruler. His greater legacy is as a patron of the arts; his great failures were as a statesman. He was forced to abdicate in 1611.

The 1783 article which follows, marvels at the neglect of clear political realities as Rudolph’s enemies prepare for war, in favour of a blind obsession with fruitless astrology and further notes the inevitable judgement of time that would eventually pass its gaze over the author’s time, as it will our own.]

A little background:

“Rudolf II of Austria (July 18, 1552–January 20, 1612), Holy Roman Emperor as Rudolf II (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia, as Rudolf (1572–1608), King of Bohemia as Rudolf II (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria as Rudolf V (1576–1608). He was a member of the House of Habsburg.

Rudolf’s legacy has traditionally been viewed in three ways: an ineffectual ruler whose mistakes led directly to the Thirty Years’ War; a great and influential patron of Northern Mannerist art; and a devotee of occult arts and learning which helped seed the scientific revolution.”

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor>

“Astrology and alchemy were mainstream science in Renaissance Prague, and Rudolf was a firm devotee of both. His lifelong quest was to find the Philosopher’s Stone and Rudolf spared no expense in bringing Europe’s best alchemists to court, such as Edward Kelley and John Dee. Rudolf even performed his own experiments in a private alchemy laboratory. When Rudolf was a prince, Nostradamus prepared a horoscope which was dedicated to him as ‘Prince and King’.

Rudolf gave Prague a mystical reputation that persists in part to this day, with Alchemists’ Alley on the grounds of Prague Castle a popular visiting place.

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor>

The article:

From 1783 – In The English Review, Or, An Abstract of English and Foreign Literature:

“The house of Austria, against which this gathering storm was directed, beheld it with astonishing indifference. The emperor, Rhodolphus, more intent on observing the motions of the heavenly bodies, than on watching the movements of his enemies, indulged a natural love of science, the only passion that is able to extinguish the pride of power in the breasts of princes.

He had given up, with little reluctance, to his brother Matthias, the government of Hungary, Moravia, and Austria, and soon after he also resigned that of Bohemia.

With the title of emperor, he lived a private man. It is matter of greater wonder that the king of Spain, in whom the passion of religion did not eradicate all the feeds of ambition, appeared unconcerned at the warlike preparations of an inveterate enemy. Whether the ministers of Spain trusted to the success of those plots they had formed against Henry in his own palace; or, that with the superstitious credulity of the age in which they lived, they confided in the completion of those predictions that about this time were so frequent in the mouths of Catholics concerning the sudden death of the king of France (*); or that they weakly imagined this monarch had no other object in view than the expulsion of Leopold from the states of Juliers; or from whatever secret cause, it is certain, that amidst a general and anxious suspence, the court of Madrid discovered not any symptoms of alarm.

The world, struck with the mighty preparations of France, wondered at the serenity of Spain, when an event happened which proved how much human affairs are governed by causes beyond the reach of princes; which frustrated the well laid designs of the great Henry, and supplied the want of vigilance and wisdom in the counsels of Philip.

The death of the French monarch, and the various effects of this great event being described with a minuteness which perhaps belongs rather to French than to Spanish history, the Editor writes as follows.

‘After the death of Henry, his friends and allies had reason to apprehend that the vindictive passions of the house of Austria would be heightened and inflamed by the hope of gratification. The Italian states especially, overawed by the power of Philip in Naples and in Lombardy, trembled lest the Spanish arms should over-run all Italy. But Charles Emanuel, duke of Savoy, whose noble mind was inspired with the pride rather than the despondency of grief, endeavoured to rally the broken forces of the league, and to unite them once more into a compact and formidable body….’

Footnote:

* This conjecture may appear at first sight, to certain readers, wholly absurd and groundless. Nevertheless it will not seem altogether extravagant, if we reflect on the power of universally received prejudices on even the strongest minds.

About this time, and even long after it, the science of judicial astrology was studied by philosophers of the highest reputation, with great gravity, and, as they firmly believed, with great success. There is in the university of Petersburgh, a very able mathematician, who is making great progress in judicial astrology at this -very day [Faust.com note: 1783]. It is certain that the duke of Lerma was a firm believer in the doctrines of this science. See Anecdotes du Ministerc du Comte due D’Olivarez.

Men of sense, of the present times, struck with that mixture of genius and extravagance which distinguishes the writings of antiquity, are at a loss how to reconcile so much reason with such great extravagance; and suspect that many of the opinions delivered in those writings were not real, but popular and affected. There is not a doubt but posterity will entertain similar doubts concerning some of the doctrines of the seventeenth and even eighteenth century. Men are ever changing their opinions, yet ever wondering that the world did not always think as they do now.

Pasted from <http://books.google.ca/books?pg=PA462&dq=astrology&ei=SYVwTZGuMI_EgAexgfVB&ct=result&id=FjMJAAAAQAAJ&output=text>