Astrology Notes

Letter from Laurent Blessig to Madame Eliza Von der Recke

Cagliostro was a popular eighteenth century sorcerer/spiritualist/occultist/healer/freemason who, in Goethe’s time, captured the attention of many of the higher classes, including for a while, Eliza Von der Recke. Goethe’s interest in Cagliostro led to his investigating Cagliostro’s origins by visiting his supposed family in the slums of Palermo, Sicily. Letter from Laurent Blessig to Madame …

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By the end of the Middle Ages….

“By the end of the Middle Ages, the common opinion in Europe was that celestial bodies were moved by external intelligences, identified with the angels of revelation. The outermost moving sphere, which moved with the daily motion affecting all subordinate spheres, was moved by an unmoved mover, the Prime Mover, who was identified with God. …

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Luther on Copernicus

Martin Luther (leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and contemporary of the real Faust) on Copernicus who unwisely showed how the Earth went around the sun and not the other way around as the Bible said: “People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens …

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What I have done is to show that it is

Quotes from modern-day scientists: “What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide on how the universe began. This doesn’t prove that there is no …

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The truth is that Christian theology….

“The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent — slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an …

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The Church reacts to the observations of early astronomy (seventeenth

The Church reacts to the observations of early astronomy (seventeenth century Galileo Inquisition): “The first proposition, that the sun is the center and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because contrary to Holy Scripture…the second proposition, that the earth is not the center but revolves about the …

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After almost a century of steady decline…

“After almost a century of steady decline, the years from 1780 onwards witnessed the faint beginnings of a revival of astrology, for reasons which are not easy to explain. Was this revival connected in some way with Romanticism, with the cult of nature or of the past? The evidence is very slight; Goethe is probably …

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A Swabian Cobbler-Farmer Survives the Thirty Years War – Hans

In the area of Central Europe, including Germany, the Thirty Years War (between 1618 and 1648) was a brutal conflict over Protestant-Catholic religious and political differences. The number who died in that long war, from all manner of consequences, including famine and the plague, numbered in the millions. The historical Faust, whose fictional legend was …

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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 …

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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 “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 …

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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 ArgumentAbout 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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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Maat or maʻat was the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth…

Maat or maʻat was the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of creation.The earliest surviving records indicating Maat …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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, …

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Herr Mikrokosmus

Herr Mikrokosmus: Faust as AstrologerAbstract: Although the earliest depictions of Faustus portray him as an astrologer, very few publications to date have touched on the role of astrology in the life of this infamous character. Parallel to the decline in astrological sciences beginning in the seventeenth century, post-Scientific Revolution depictions of Faust have deemphasized astrology …

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