Chapter 8. Updates and Addenda
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U1. I spoke about Stoics in Chapter 1, Sections 39-50, and in Chapter 5, sections 30-33. In his book Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer, 1999, Anthony Grafton contrasts what he takes to be characteristic of Stoic views of our physical universe with those of many astrologers. He says (p. 201):
“Philosophers who imagined themselves as looking down to earth from the dizzying vantage point of the heavens normally did so in order to distance themselves from trivial concerns, to master the deeper realities of the cosmic order. Marcus Aurelius – whom, as we have seen, Cardano tried to use as his guide into the moral life – laid special weight on this form of mental discipline. His constant efforts to show that things of the world and the body had no substantial worth, as Carlo Ginzburg has recently argued, represented an effort to make alienation from all everyday concerns the mark of wisdom. And the royal road to alienation lay through a consistent effort to contemplate the vast expanse of space and time in the universe – and thus to remove oneself from the momentary concernings, which were revealed, when they appeared before this immense backdrop, as worthless. Marcus Aurelius’ sometimes puzzling questions and riddles formed organic parts of a rationally conceived program of mental and spiritual exercises.” (The reference to Carlo Ginzburg is to Occhiacci di legno: Nove riflessione sulla distanza, Milan, 1998, p. 15-39.
Grafton continues: “For Cardano and other astrologers, by contrast, the cosmic perspective that lent distance had a radically different value. It concentrated their attention on the local and ephemeral. Examining the staars that shone at a client’s birth, watching the movements of the planets during an illness, made the contours of the client’s permanent character, even the minor ones, and the details of his short-term case history, even its ephermeral fluctuations, stand out with a new clarity. Distance enhanced the astrologers’ promiscuous attention to the kinds of detail philosophers disdained. Their cosmic viewpoint focused and intensified their intimate contact with the emotional and the corporeal side of each individual life, as if a viewpoint on the celestial pole or at the mid-heaven actually magnified the minute details of individual life on earth. In the world of the astrologers, opposition might not be true friendship, but distance could be true intimacy.” (Grafton refers in this connection to R. Reisinger, Historische Horoskopie, Wiesbaden, 1997.)
U2. I note that what
Grafton refers to as viewpoints of philosophers, presumably especially Stoic
philosophers and perhaps numerous medieval Christian and other philosophers,
fits in with what I’ve said in Chapter 4 in connection with a common view
that a major influence of Copernican theory was to displace mankind from a
central place in the universe in people’s minds, and to make people more
humble if that’s taken to imply that they were overproud before.
I note also that in trying to explain the extraordinary persistence of
astrology over a couple of thousand years or more, in the face of
philosophical, theological and other sorts of condemnations and prohibitions
of it, one might look to the way astrologers concentrate on working out
details of this-worldly affairs rather than on other-worldly affairs.
U3. With regard to ancient Mesopotamia, some of whose astral interests I discussed in Chapter 4, a treatise on the subject was published in 1999 by Hermann Hunger and David Pingree called Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia. A major part of this work is devoted to detailed presentations and interpretations of astronomical data as recorded and mathematically manipulated by ancient Babylonians, based on a large but not exhaustive quantity of the clay tablets on which the records were inscribed, and which have been collected by various archeologists and stored in various locations. There is a resumé of what is known about the beginnings of Babylonian astrology and astronomy which agrees on the whole with what I presented in Chapter 4. Interest in such matters appears to have been connected early with interpretations of signs and omens. Hunger and Pingree say (p. 1): "People in Ancient Mesopotamia believed that the gods would indicate future events to mankind. These indications were called "signs", in Sumerian (g)iskim, in Akkadian ittu. Such signs could be of very different kinds. There were to be found in the entrails of sacrificial animals, in the shapes of oil spreading after being dropped into water, in phenomena observed in the sky, in strange occurrences in everyday life. We can classify omens into two trype: those that can be produced when they are wanted (e.g., to answer a question) and those that happen without human action provoking them. An example of the first type are omens from the inspection of the entrails of sheep; to the second type belong all omens observed in the sky. Omens can be classified according to their predictions: some omens concern the king, the country, or the city; others refer to private individuals and their fortunes."
U4. Hunger and Pingree go on to emphasize that neither of these types of omens seems to have been interpreted fatalistically. They say (p. 1): "One thing is to be kept in mind: the gods send the signs, but what these signs announce is not unavoidable fate. A sign in a Babylonian text is not an absolute cause of a coming event, but a warning. By appropriate actions one can prevent the predicted event from happening. The idea of determinism is not inherent in this concept of sign. The knowledge of signs is however based on experience: once it was observed that a certain sign had been followed by a specific event, it is considered known that this sign, whenever it is observed again, will indicate the same future event. So while there is an empirical basis for assuming a connection between sign and following event, this does not imply a notion of causality."
U5. Eclipses were among the most dangerous omens. Hunger and Pingree describe an unusual method which was employed to avoid dangerous consequences of certain eclipses. They say (p. 25): "If an eclipse implied the death of the king of Assyria, some man was chosen to be put in his place, at least for all appearances. Usually someone whose life was not considered important, like a condemned criminal, seems to have been used for this purpose. He was clad like a king and made to sit on the throne, but of course he had no influence on government. In order to make it clear to everyone who was to suffer the impending evil, the bad portents were recited to the substitute king. The true king, in the meantime, had to behave as inconspicuously as possible, avoid being seen outside the palace, and undergo extensive purifying rites. In letters written to him during such a period, the king was to be addressed as "farmer" in order to avoid any association with kingship. It was expected that the dire fate announced by the omen would fall on the substitute king. The assumed time of validity of such an omen was 100 days. If additional unfavorable portents were expected (e.g., other eclipses), the substitute would remain enthroned for most of this time. Otherwise, his "reign" could be rather short; it was neither convenient nor necessary to extend it. In any case, the substitute king had to die. It is unknown how his death was brought about, but it was the decision of the true king: in the letters, the advisers ask the "farmer" on which day the substitute king "should go to his fate". He was then buried and mourned like a king." The authors cite here S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, part II, 1983, p. xxii-xxxii. They go on to say that "According to literary tradition, a substitute king was enthroned during the reign of Erra-imitti of Isin in the early part of the 2nd millennium [B.C.]; this case was atypical insofar as the true king died while the substite sat on the throne, and so the reign passed to the latter. The reference for this is A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 1975, p. 155.
U6. Hunter and Pingree state that "We do not know when this belief in omens originated; by the time when texts containing these omens are attested, it is already well established. That is about the last third of the third millennium B.C." (p. 6) They observe that "In the first millennium B.C., celestial omens are found organized in a series of tablets called Enuma Anu Enlil ("When Anu (and) Enlil") after the opening words of its mythological introduction. ... The mythological introduction (lines 1-8) traces the order of heaven and earth back to the gods Anu, Enlil, and Ea It comes in a Sumerian and an Akkadian version which are slightly different from each other. The Sumerian version mentions the Moon god, the Akkadian versian the Sun god, but in different functions." (p. 12, 14)
U7. With regard to horoscopic astrology, Hunger and Pingree say (p. 26-27): "At the end of the 5th century B.C., the earliest examples (datable to -409) of what what has been called Babylonian horoscopes are attested." It is said that so far 32 such horoscopes are known (F. Rochberg-Halton, "Babylonian Horoscopes and their Sources", Orientalia 58, 1989, p. 102-123). "They begin with the date on which a child was born. Rarely is the name of the child mentioned. Then follow the positions of the planets, in the sequence Moon, Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, and Mars. Their positions are more often given by zodiacal sign alone, less often by degree within a sign. Apart from these positions, other astronomical data are included in the horoscope. These can be more or less distant in time from the date of birth, but were probably considered as possibly significant. Such are the length of the month (whether 29 or 30 days), the time interval between sunrise and moonset just after full moon, and the time between moonrise and sunrise towards the end of the month. Further events are eclipses, including those that were not visible in Babylonia, equinoxes and solstices, and conjunctions of the moon with reference stars. ... Most of the horoscopes do not give any predictions about the future life of the child. Such predictions were probably to be found on different tablets. There exist a number of nativity omen texts which could have served this purpose ... Occasionally, such nativity omens are quoted in horoscopes. One could see in a horoscope a listing of the "signs" available for the date of birth, a kind of omen protasis [statement of the sort "if such and such happens"], for which the apodosis [following statement of the sort "then this-or-that will happen"] was to be found in the omen literature. Seen in this way, the horoscopes would be an expansion of the tradition omen procedure, and not a radical departure from them." (p.27; references to F. Rochberg-Halton, loc. cit., p. 110, and F. Rochberg, "Babylonian Horoscopes", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 88/1, 1998, p. 16).
U8. According to Hunger and Pingree, one category of records pertaining to Babylonian astral concerns, in addition to the collections known as Enuma Anu Enlil, is called "Letters and Reports". These were sent to Assyrian kings, notably Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, most of them between 677 B.C. and 665 B.C. (p. 23-24). Another category is known as the "Diaries". These are said to be "records of observations and computations made during each period of half a year (six or seven months). The oldest so far was inscribed in -651, but the series probably began in the first year of Nabu-nasir, -746 ... while the latest securely dated Diary is from -60. This means that the tradition of keeping the Diaries persisted through seven centuries --- or even eight, if the Diaries continued to be kept till the end of cuneiform writing in the late first century A.D. During this time-span Babylonia was rules by native Dynasties, Achaemenid Persians, Hellenized Macedonians, and Parthiana, so it is unlikely that the supporting institution was the state. There is some evidence, from the late second century B.C., that the observers for the Diaries were employed by the Temple of Marduk in Babylon ... The purpose of the compilation of the Diaries has been much debated. Two recent studies take opposite stands: Swerdlow (N.M. Swerdlow, The Babylonian Theory of the Planets, 1998) argues that they were intimately connected with the Mesopotamian practice of reading celestial omens, while Slotsky (A.L. Slotsky,The Bourse of Babylon, 1997), following a suggestion by Pingree, interprets them as intended, as far as the celestial observations are concerned, for astronomical purposes." Six reasons supporting the latter hypothesis are given. They are chiefly based on the notions of periodicity which are evident with regard to the data given in the Diaries. For example, the majority of the omens given in the Enuma Anu Enlil, and the Letters and Reports, are in no sense periodic, whereas the Diaries show a concentration on periodic phenomena. And, it is suggested, "The Diaries treat periodic phenomena as predictable; this deprives them of their meaning as omens. For omens, celestial or otherwise, are sent to man as warnings by the gods. They must be seen, not computed, and they must occur randomly. The scribes of the Diaries certainly continued to believe in omens since they report some, but they cannot be shown to believe that the celestial and and terrestrial phenomena they primarily revealed [in the Diaries] were ominous. The reason for the inclusion of non-periodic phenomena such as historical events in the Diaries remains unclear to us." (p. 139-140) The implication is that the Babylonian astral investigators of this period had latched onto the idea of making predictions of future astronomical phenomena based on observable periodic celestial phenomena, especially on the motions of celestial objects. Another factor is that the earlier omens often considered what we knowadays interpret as weather or meteorological phenomena, for which, as we know, predictability is uncertain at best, and perhaps impossible in the case of chaotic phenoma, i.e. those which at best we will only be able to attempt prediction by techniques based on nonlinear dynamics, and for which inductive reasoning (averages, probabilities) based on statistical analysis of past instances of weather phenomena are only rough guides.
U9. The degree to which the Slotsky-Pingree evaluation is correct would be very significant in assigning provenance to the rise of mathematical and observational astronomy as independent, to some degree, from astrology in the sense of reading omens and, later, horoscopes from celestial phenomena. In fact, the dates of the earliest known personal horoscopes, reported above, and the earliest known indications of astronomical studies based on careful observations and mathematical techniques are roughly in the same periods. This suggests that the split of what we nowadays think of as astrology (in a broad sense) and astronomy (in recent senses of the term) began at roughly the same time, and that this was also perhaps when genethlialogical interpretations of celestial phenomena (i.e., predictions of the future based on times of birth of persons or data of origin of other entities) began to separate from the more general judicial astrology in which predictions were made for kingdoms and their rulers based directly on alignments of planets and stars without reference to birth dates.
U10. The work Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars, 1995, by Ann Geneva, is centered mainly on the astrological of one man, Lilly, described, as the author says, by Bernard Capp as "the most abused as well as the most celebrated astrologer of the seventeenth century." (p. 55; the reference is to Capp's English Almanacs 1500-1800, 1979, p. 57). Geneva interprets astrology as a "symbolic language system" (e.g., the title of Chapter 9 is "The Decline of Astrology as a Symbolic Language System.") Her Chapter 6, called " 'Ars Longa, Vita Brevis': The Starry Language Decoded" discusses Lilly's use of astrological techniques and terminology to "encrypt" his prognostications, which were generally political in nature, and especially concerned the struggles between the Parliamentarians and Royalists of the time of Charles I of England. Lilly was much devoted to the cause of the Parliamentarians. For example, she gives (p. 176) the following three methods of such "encryptment" by Lilly::
"1. SUBSTITUTION. Predicting the King's death using the individual geniture tradition by substituting aspects of the King's natal geniture to avoid explicit reference to either his name or his nativity.
2. CELESTIAL OMENS. The use of an ancient tradition linking naatural phenomena such as comets and eclipses to sublunar events, and specifically to major upheavals in government and the death of kings.
3. CONJUNCTIONS. The historiographical use of conjunctionist astrology, stemming from the eighth century Sasanian astrologers, to position the King's impending defeat and death within large periodic cycles of time, enhancing the sense of cosmic order an inevitability."
If I understand Geneva correctly, she means by calling Lilly's version of astrology a "symbolic language system" that he used connections between celestial phenomena as parallels to political phenomena, and especially to predict the course of political events in England leading up to the execution of Charles I, and took advantage of a parallel known to initiates between astrological names or symbols, and the names of prominent political and military figures. She downplays the role of astronomy and mathematical calculations in the work of an astrologer. She says (p. 9): "While astrology shared some common ground with astronomy and mathematics, it had developed as a prognostic art within its own tradition, generating unique diagnostic categories and methodologies. Precise knowledge of geocentric astronomy was crucial in calculating the initial figure, but the true skill of the astrological practitioner resided in interpretation. And much like painters who hire others to paint their backgrounds, astrologers by the early modern period did not always bother to perform their own computations. Once the celestial paradigm had been accurately determined, the astrologer identified the meanings of literally scores of variables, from astrology's symbolic language into the vernacular. Early modern astrology as such thus had more in common with the art of medical diagnosis -- a comparison that also occurred to Ptolemy --- than it did with astronomy or mathematics." This view seems to make the astronomical and mathematical bases of astrology (in present-day senses of these terms) rather inessential to the kind of authority that astrological predictions were believed to have had by some, as compared with other methods of prognostication, such as crystal-gazing, use of Tarot cards, reading tea leaves, and so on.
U11. Geneva proposes (p. 6) that "One need only consult Ptolemy's second century AD Tetrabiblos to see that astronomy and astrology constituted two quite separate, and often incompatible pursuits. While to Ptolemy astrology is 'prediction through astronomy', he makes the clearest possible distinction between the two by publishing his great work on astronomy, the Almagest, in a separate volume from the Tetrabiblos. Despite this, even the flap copy of the Loeb edition of the Tetrabiblos insists astrology from Ptolemy's day through the Renaissance was 'fused as a respectable science with astronomy." To my mind, this is rather like saying that psychology and biology are two quite separate pursuits, which they are in some respects. Still, the role of biology in psychology may be likened, in my view, to the role of astronomy in astrology, and historically psychology and biology (quite modern terms) were fused integrally for a long time, given due allowance to the fact that psychology and biology did not become separate, in some respects, from each other and from other kinds of study until comparatively recently. The extent to which psychology can be "reduced" to biology (and biology to chemistry, and chemistry to physics, and even, sometimes, physics to mathematics) is still a matter of lively debate. There is also the matter of the scope of the terms corresponding to our "astronomy" and "astrology" (e.g., in Latin, Greek and Akkadian) in past times, as compared to later usages, as discussed in Chapter I of the present work.
U12. Geneva asks (p. 71) " ... exactly what was Lilly so good at? ... some of his admirers had studied astrology for as long as Lilly had done. Yet despite their greater ability in subjects like astronomy, mathematics, Latin, physics, languages, geometry, theology, and philosophy, Lilly remained their acknowledged superior in judicial astrology. He obviously had a knack: but for what? If merely a combination of modern intellectual skills, such as historians often claim of astrology --- part psychology, religion, mathematics, physics, sociology, journalism, etc. --- had been required then surely others would have triumphed. If he were alive now, Lilly would be practicing in none of these professions. I finally decided that this was a genuinely obsolete category. Nothing in the twentieth century is comparable. The answer then became self-evident: Lilly was a genius in exactly the category of knowledge which he claimed as his own --- that of judicial astrology. What skills this comprised when stripped of distorting modern contexts was another matter, one which the remainder of this study will try to explicate." If I understand this claim correctly, Geneva is attributing to Lilly possession of a lost art, and one which evidently stands alone, independent of other kinds of arts and sciences, such as those she listed. Does this mean that Lilly had some facility for some kind of direct revelation obtained from arranging and contemplating what Geneva calls the symbols, or symbolic language, of astrology, which presumably was a kind of medium for his prognostications? My reading of Geneva's work leads me to speculate that what she has shown is rather that Lilly's genius lay mainly in his ability to diagnose and predict major political movements of his time, based (as Geneva quotes him as saying) on careful study and attention to political events and processes, and communicated by him in a clever way by means of astrological concepts and terminology. I wonder, too, whether or not he was also a kind of genius at political propaganda, communicating in his symbolic or encrypted way in the face of strict censorship and extreme punishment for disloyalty to the king, and perhaps also influencing the outcomes which he predicted.
U13. I don't find in Geneva's work a study of predictions of Lilly which failed, as compared to those which succeeded. She does note, however, (p. 184) that "when Lilly found the astrological tradition wanting, he did not hesitate to develop a new methodology using existing astrological formulations. He also expressed his intention of passing it on to his astrological inheritors, an ambition in keeping with his more respectable scientific contemporaries. And finally, there is Geneva's quotation (p. 281) of a statement by Lilly: "my arguments are not demonstrative, or can be made so: I acknowledge my Prognosticks to be only grounded upon conjectural probabilitie, and are not subject to the senses, or Geometricall demonstrations; thus I speak to avoyd carping."
U14. It is interesting to compare the points of view of Ann Geneva described above, and those of Ulla Koch-Westenholz in her work Mesopotamian Astrology: An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination, 1995. Koch-Westenholz distinguishes between "artificial" and "natural" divination. Following Cicero (de divinatione 1.11, 2.26), she defines natural divination as "direct, inspired communications from the gods that 'the mind seizes from without', e.g. dreams and oracles." (p. 9). The point of view of Geneva seems to attribute to Lilly's practice of judicial astrology something of the nature of such natural divination, not essentially based on anything else than direct contacts with the future (whether from the "gods" or God or not). Perhaps this is more than Geneva wants to claim, but there is a tendency toward this, I think, in her proposals that Lilly didn't depend on astronomy, mathematics, etc., except as a mode of communicating what he "saw" for the future. "Artificial divination" is defined by Koch-Westerholz as including "everything where 'computation and constant observation' is necessary to ascertain the gods' will." (p. 10) Koch-Westerholz goes on to say that "While inspired divination certainly is attested in Ancient Mesopotamia, it appears to have been of minor importance, and the bulk of our sources, the omen compendia, concerns deductive divination." She distinguishes between two kinds of deductive divination, "provoked omens" such as found in induced examination of entrails or oil slicks in water basins, and "unprovoked omens" such as arise from interpretations of occurrences which "appear without being asked for, e.g. astrology." She observes that these two kinds of deductive divination were practiced by different kinds of experts: "the baru, diviner, whose main field was provoked omens" and "the tupsarru, scribe/scholar, whose expertise included unprovoked omens and exorcism." (p. 10)
U15. Geneva proposed a quite radical separation of astronomy and astrology, even in antiquity, whereas Koch-Westerholz states: "As a rule astronomy and astrology have always been treated separately, while in fact they were never regarded as separate before the end of the Renaissance -- and certainly not in Ancient Mesopotamia." This view is reflected in the title of the present work, The Marriage of Astronomy and Astrology. Koch-Westerholz refers to an article by F. Rochberg-Halton (American Oriental Series, 1987, 67, p 327 ff.) in which it is recommended "that historians differentiate between the specific goals and method of ancient astronomy and astrology. ... But she also stresses that 'the training and interests of the scribes in both these areas very likely stemmed from one intellectual tradition.' A close link continued also during the evolution of mathematical astronomy. ... With the rise of mathematical astronomy in the 5th century B.C., by which it became possible to calculate the movements of the planets and predict eclipses, it is hard to understand how such events could be seen as portentous accidents or willed communications from the gods. In fact, the whole discipline of astrology became fundamentally changed, both as to basic principles, and its uses ... " (p. 21-22) I suggest that Koch-Westerholz, when speaking of the rise of mathematical astronomy in the 5th century B.C., is referring to what I would call the rise of geometric astronomy. There is abundant evidence, e.g. in the works of Otto Neugebauer and his colleagues, that the ancient Babylonians practiced a kind of mathematical astronomy, albeit not based on geometric models. In modern terms, they practiced, for example, interpolation of values in tables of observations by various arithmetical schemes for purposes of making predictions of eclipses, which was and still is use of a kind of mathematics by most definitions of the term "mathematics". Cf. Chapter 4, section 46, of the present work. Still, it is still accurate, I expect, to say that the rise of geometric astronomy in the 5th century B.C. (or perhaps a bit earlier) transformed the practice of astral prediction.
U16. Koch-Westerholz observes that "The provoked omens are signs deliberately sought to answer specific questions formally addressed to the gods. By their very nature, such signs are always sent by gods. Unprovoked omens may likewise be regarded as willed divine communications, or they may be seen as "signs" (ittu) without any sender, like our black cat crossing the street or what we would call 'symptoms'. This ambivalence between a theistic and a mechanistic world view permeates much of Babylonian thought and is duly reflected in the astrological texts. ... the relation between ominous events and their interpretations could be regarded as part of a purely mechanical scheme of things." (p. 11-12). Also, it was possible to avert or mitigate a predicted bad event by means of special rituals, involving prayers and offerings. Koch-Westerholz says: "In fact, most bad omens could be averted mechanically by performing the appropriate namburbu [rituals]. This is a far cry from the gods ruling the universe by their immutable will." (p. 12) This presumably applies to all kinds of Babylonian divination practices and theories. Thus there appears to have been no commitment, at least up to the Hellenistic period, to strict determinism or fatalism in connection with the observation and interpretation of omens.
U17. On the origins of astrology as practiced by the Babylonians, Koch-Westerholz discusses a view attributed to P. J. Huber ("Dating by Lunar Eclipse Omens with Speculations on the Birth of Omen Astrology", FS Asger Aaboe, Acta Historica Scientiarum Naturalium et Medicinalium, Vol. 39, 1987). Huber is said to have suggested that omen astrology arose by a process similar to that which has been atrributed to the rise of extispicy, predictions of future events based on examining and interpreting the entrails of sacrificed sheep, which Koch-Westerholz calls "the Babylonian divinatory discipline par excellence. (p. 14) According to this view, the "protasis", the ominous phenomenon "read" from a liver was linked to "apodasis", the signified event, by "circumstantial association." The procedure, presumably, was thus to link the state of the entrails with a near-contemporaneous event for the purpose of making future predictions. It was then a kind of causation concluded from correlation (perhaps by an inductive process in which more than one example was involved?). Then, says Koch-Westerholz, in this view of the origins of omen prognostication, "Closely following the empirical stage ... came the theoretical stage when the omina were written down in long tabular compendia on tablets. At the same time, the empirical findings were 'phrased in accordance with the code', i.e. a set of general rules or a theoretical system, and remaining blanks in the system, for which no empitical data were available, could be filled out by interpolation." (p. 14) (Presumably Koch-Westerholz is not referring here to interpolation as a mathematical or arithmetical technique.) P. J.Huber is said by Koch-Westerholz to have suggested an analogous origin for omen astrology, based to start with on lunar eclipses being associated with the deaths of certain Old Akkadian kings. Koch-Westerholz finds problems with Huber's arguments, as she discusses on p. 35-36. There seems to have been a biased selection of available evidence by Huber, and also doubts about the chronology used by Huber.
U18. Koch-Westerholz argues that various suggestions about the origins of Babylonian divinatory practices in general have overstressed the precedence in time of empirical data over theoretical hypotheses. She says "In my opinion, the idea of an empirical background of Babylonian divination is very difficult to uphold. ... It is generally agreed by modern philosophers of science that knowledge about the world is rarely obtained by purely empirical observation, without some pre-existing theory to integrate the observed data. In other words, the 'circumstantial association' assumed to be the fountainhead of the historical omens, is in itself unlikely." She cites as "modern philosophers of science" N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, 1965 and Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959 (this was the English translation -- the original German version, Logik der Forschung, was published in 1935), who are two of the early pioneers, along with many others (e.g. Alexander Koyré) in maintaining a primacy of theoretical and deductive methods over inductive methods based on empirical data gathered in advance, without any theoretical bases fixed in advance. The latter as a view of the way science proceeds is often attributed to Francis Bacon. Caricatures of the two positions are sometimes advanced. On one side, it is claimed that empirical data can be gathered without any particular plan as to what conclusions can be drawn from the data, and conclusions then drawn and hypotheses made and theories constructed afterwards by general methods which can be applied to any kind of empirical data thus obtained. On the other side, it may be claimed that any gathering of empirical data is guided from the start by some sort of hypotheses or theories held by the gatherers, perhaps without the gatherers being aware or fully aware of the theories they have in mind. In my view, the actual state of affairs in such procedures is a continual interaction of gathering empirical data and theorizing on the basis of it, in which the primacy of one over the other changes over time and among different gatherers. To argue about which comes first seems to me unproductive, although in specific instances, it may be possible to point to one or the other as having come first in a specific endeavor to attain knowledge or probable knowledge of some sort.
U19. Later in her work, Koch-Westerholz also speaks in such a way that she considers the empirical and theoretical to be in continual interaction, although she attributes a sort of primacy to the theoretical. She is concerned to consider what sorts of assumptions guided Babylonian astrologers in choosing what to observe and how to classify their observations. She says: "Babylonian astrology was the result of the interaction of practical observation and theoretical schematization well known from the other omen series. The crucial phenomena in divination: heliacal [first appearance just before sunrise, last setting just after sunset] and acronycial [last rising just after sunset] risings and settings, stationary points [as when a planet retrogrades], conjunctions [two or more bodies having the same celestial longitudes, i.e. one just "above" the other] and other positions in relation to a particular celestial body, eclipses, colours and other optical phenomena, all derive from actual observations rather than speculations. But it is obvious that practical experience was subordinate to theory or schematization: in order to fit the various schemata, also phenomena which never occur in reality were listed in the series, especially in the eclipse sections ... The schematization included binary oppositions like: left - right, above - below, in front of - behind, sunrise - sunset, bright - faint, on time - late/early; and qualifications like: colours: white, black, red and yellow; direction: the four quarters; time: month, day, watch, duratiion; location: path of Anu, Enlil or Ea (Footnote: The paths of Enlil, Anu and Ea were probably areas along the eastern horizon rather than bands in the sky parallel to the celestial equator as previously supposed ...) Furthermore, these opposites and qualifications do not have the same meaning in all contexts; astrology is very far from the neat generalizations striven for in barutu [artificial omens], but there are some tendencies in that direction." (p. 97-98) Koch-Westerholz gives an interesting example of the application of the "bright - faint" distinction: "A simple rule that is common to all kinds of Babylonian divination is of almost mathematical rigour: within the same omen, a good sign with a good sign has a good prediction; good combined with bad means bad; bad combined with bad means good. Expressed algebraically, the rule is also familiar to us: ++ = +; +- = -; -- = +. An often quoted example of this rule is found in the astrological texts: if a well-portending planet is bright: favourable (++ = +); if it is faint: unfavourable (+- = -); of it is faint: favourable (- - = +). But the rule might also be illustrated from texts of extispicy or lecanomancy as early as Old Babylonian." (p. 11)
U20. David Pingree in his work From Astral Omens to Astrology: From Babylon to Bikaner, 1997, gives numerous details which supplement my discussions of origins of astrology in Babylonia, Greece, and other parts of the world. In this work, Pingree doesn't add much to what has already been said here about origins of astrology in Babylonia itself. There are large gaps in what is known, and much of what is said about this remains conjectural. Of the origins of what we nowadays often refer to as horoscopic astrology, Pingree says: "The science of astrology was developed in, most probably the late 2nd or early 1st century B.C. as a means to predict, from horoscopic themata drawn up for the moment of an individual's birth (or conception), the fate of that native. This form of astrology, called genethlialogy, is rooted in Aristotelian physics and Hellenistic astronomy, but also borrowed much from Mesopotamia and some elements from Egypt as well as developing many theories of its own. The adaptation of this form of astrology to determine the best time for initiating actions is known as catarchic astrology. These are the two main forms of astrology known in the West; interrogational astrology was developed in India in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. on the basis of Greek catarchic astrology, and historical astrology in Sasanian Iran in perhaps the 5th or 6th century A.D. on the basis of continuous forms of Greek genethlialogy. All of these types of astrology depend on the notion that the planets, in their eternal rotations about the earth, transmit motion (change) to the four elements and to the assemblages of elements, animate and inanimate, in the sublunar world. This theory is completely different from that of celestial omens, in which the gods, whose physicl manifestations are the constellations and planets, send messages concerning their intentions regarding kings and countries, by means of celestial phenomena. That these divine intentions can be altered by the use of propitiatory rituals (namburbis) in Mesopotamia, santis in India) emphasizes the fundamental conceptual difference between omens and astrology." (p. 21-22) Pingree goes on to say, however, that astrology does have a Mesopotamian background, and gives an example of this "pre-astrology" from "a 13th century B.C. Hittite tablet based on a translation from an Old Babylonian Akkadian text in which a brief prediction is made for a person depending on the month in which he was born." (p. 22) Based on an example used by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus in analyzing the conditional "If someone is born when Canicula (Sirius) is rising, he will not die in the ocean", which appears to be related to a record in a Babylonian principal manual of instruction translated by Pingree (or perhaps by A. Sachs) as "The place of Cancer: death in the ocean". Pingree says "This correlation, if correct, shows that the Babylonian science of birth omens was known in the Greek world by the late 3rd century B.C." "But," says Pingree, "Babylonian birth omens were probably known in Greece long before these Stoic philosophers debated about their validity." (p. 23) Pingree cites Eudoxus, one of the great mathematicians of classical Greece, as one who, according to Cicero, recommended that "one should not at all believe 'the Chaldeaeans in their prediction and noting down of anyone's life from the day of birth." The theory in the 5th book of Euclid's Elements [of geometry] is attributed to Eudoxus (4th century B.C.), in which the first known treatment of what has become known as the real number system was presented, one which is still as sound today as it was in the 4th century B.C., and was in use in its original form until sometime in the 19th century A.D. In that century, several alternative versions were presented, e.g. those of Augustin Cauchy, Richard Dedekind and Georg Cantor, whose major differences from the development given by Eudoxus on matters of "existence" of real numbers other than rational numbers (ratios of whole numbers). Eudoxus is also credited by Archimedes with first rigorously proving formulas for volumes connected with spheres and cylinders, and perhaps most famously of all for presenting a geometrically based planetary theory, i.e. a geometrical model for the planets known in his time of what we now call our solar system On the other hand, Pingree observes that Proclus (5th century A.D.) cites Theophrastus (around 300 B.C.) as "praising the theory of the Chaldaeans in his day which 'predicts the lives and deaths of individuals.' " (p. 24)
U21. Pingree goes on to describe influences of what he calls Babylonian astronomy (rather than astrology, or interpretation of celestial omens -- ) in India, which he says are "perceptible in Sanskrit texts of the first half of the last millennium B.C." (p. 31; on p. 32, Pingree refers to "Babylonian astral sciences" in this connection). In subsequent chapters, he describes further transmission of astral predictive material in India, Iran (Persia) and Byzantium. It appears that remaining records about Persian astrological practices are scarce, presumably because most of them were destroyed after the advent of Mohammed. In India, relevant Sanskrit records are more prevalent.
U22. The title of the book by Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars, 1991, doesn't indicate the scope of this work. The first two-thirds of the work is devoted to setting the stage for a presentation of Origen's views on astral influences. While Scott is primarily interested in implications for Christian theology, in my view Scott also sets a stage for showing influences on and influences of the marriage between astronomy and astrology as found in Europe and northern Africa and southwestern Asia in classical, Hellenistic and early medieval times. Scott opens with a consideration of the thought of pre-Socratic philosophers of classical Greece, and the thought of Plato on the nature of the stars and planets. He observes: "In contrast to many other pre-industrial societies, a formal cult of the stars was almost unknown in ancient Greece. Aristophanes, Plato, and Aristotle regarded their worship as either an archaic or foreign practice, but the veneration of heavenly bodies, particularly the sun and moon, was not unusual in popular piety. Common practices always affect intellectual life, and Greece was no exception; even in the Parthenon, the very symbol of classical Athens, the sun and moon appear as gods. ... And yet this common supposition tht the heavens were alive was increasingly examined, questioned, and even rejected as Greek astronomy began its scientific development on the other side of the Greek-speaking world among the Ionians. As a reult, belief in the divinity of the stars is conspicuously rare in Greek philosophy between Alcmaeon and Plato." (p. 3-4) Scott reviews some of the fragments we have left of the pre-Socratic philosophers, such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Archelaos, Democritus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, as to speculations about the physical nature of the heavenly bodies. They were said to be "made of earth and fire", "fiery bodies", "rocks" or "red hot stones", "full of fire", and so on. Scott says: "The precise religious beliefs of the Ionian naturalists or of those who accepted their teachings on the heavens is not clear, but they were perceived as denying the gods, as Aristophanes' play The Clouds makes clear. ... Plutarch indicates the unpopularity of this naturalism with respect to the heavens, referring here to the teachings of Anaxagoras: 'It was still not talked about and spread only among a few, who received it with some caution rather than giving it much credence. They could not bear the natural philosophers and what were then called the 'star-gazers', because they frittered away divinity into irrational causes, unforeseen forces, and necessary occurrences.' " (p. 5-6)
U23. Plato's views about the heavens and stars changed over the course of his lifetime. He appears to have been more concerned with their roles in the cosmos in his later life. In the Statesman, one of the later dialogues, he speaks of the planets, taken to include our sun and moon as well as the five planets (in our present-day sense) which are visible without instruments. He notes, as Scott puts it, that "in the first era of history God imparts his own motion to the universe, but that there is another era in which the universe begins to move in the opposite direction under its own power, since its Maker has made it both living and rational. Thus for the first time (if the usual chronologies of Plato's works can be trusted) Plato suggests that an independent rational power is at work in at least some of the heavenly bodies (i.e. the planets), and that this accounts for an observable phenomenon." (p. 10) The planets are thus endowed according to Plato's story, with a power belonging to themselves.
U24. In the Statesman, Plato is concerned about how the majority of celestial objects, the "fixed" stars, revolve every day one way, from East to West, but that a few prominent "stars", namely the five planets (though not the Sun and Moon), while they share in this diurnal rotation sometimes go the opposite way with respect to the fixed stars. Plato has the Stranger say, beginning at section 268, by way of telling a "pleasant story": "There is an era in which the god himself assists the universe on its way and helps it in its rotation. There is also an era in which he releases his control. He does this when its circuits have completed the due limit of the time thereto appointed. Thereupon it begins to revolve in the contrary sense under its own impulse -- for it is a living creature and has been endowed with reason by him who framed it in the beginning." (translated by J. B. Skemp, 1952, p. 23 ff. of edition of 1957). In Plato's later very influential dialogue Timaeus, his cosmology is more developed and detailed. In connection with how Plato's speculations about the natures of celestial bodies influenced the development and acceptance of astrological doctrines, it is suggestive that he assigns to stars two kinds of motion, the diurnal revolutions from East to West, and also axial rotations. In addition, the five planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, have a different kind of motion peculiar to them, retrograde motion from West to East with respect to the fixed stars. The movement from East to West of the fixed stars, shared by the planets (including the Sun and Moon) is, according to Plato's story, imparted to them and perhaps maintained by the Demiurge, Plato's name for the deity who creates and manages the physical universe as based on eternal models or Ideas established and managed by a superior deity. Thus celestial objects do not maintain this motion from within themselves, although they are said to be alive and have souls. The axial rotations of the celestial objects hypothesized by Plato are said to originate and be maintained from within the bodies, and thus can be said to be powers they themselves possess. In addition, the retrogradation of the five planets shows that they have an additional power, as do the annual spiral motions of the sun and moon with respect to the fixed stars. The upshot of all this, as applied to development of astrology, is that Plato assigns a certain power to all the stars, and additional powers to the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Our Earth is also said to be alive and to have a soul.
U25. Now, by way of relating the stars and their powers to people, Plato says that with the residue of that which the Demiurge had "mixed and blended the soul of the universe", a residue which was no longer as pure as it was before, the Demiurge "divided it into souls equal to number with the stars, and distributed them, each soul to its several star." (41D-E, translated by F. M. Cornford in his Plato's Cosmology, 1937, p. 142 of the 1957 edition). Plato goes on (42B): "And he who should live well for his due span of time should journey back to the habitation of his consort star and there live a happy and congenial life; but failing of this, he should shift at his second birth into a woman' and if in this condition he still did not cease from wickedness, then according to the character of his depravation, he should constantly be changed into some beast of a nature resembling the formation of that character, and should have no rest from the travail of these changes, until letting the revolution of the Same and uniform within himself draw into its train all that turmoil of fire and water and air and earth that had later grown about ir, he should control its irrational turbulence by discourse of reason and return once more to the form of his first and best condition." (idem, p. 144) Having created the souls of humans, each human corresponding to a star, the Demiurge "sowed them, some in the Earth, some in the Moon, some in all the other instruments of time." (idem, 42D, p. 144). For Plato identified the planets as "instruments of time".
U26. Scott says (p. 55, 57-58): "Aside from the Epicureans, all the major philosophical schools in the Hellenistic era believed in the divinity of the stars. Even the notorious atheist Euhemerus (fl. 300 BC) acknowledged that they (at least) were gods. And yet an identificaion was not without its difficulties. A problem particularly vexing for Platonists was the visibility of the stars (since divinity was thought to be perceptible to the mind only and not to the senses), and this was a frequent topic of discussion in Platonic circles. ... One response was to say that in the case of the stars, soul was perfectly adapted to body and the lower and visible part to a higher intelligible part. The 'secondary' gods exist through the higher invisible gods, depending on them as the star's radiance depends on the star. In the star the divine soul exercises a perfect supremacy. Chaeremon does not seem particularly interested in any other gods besides the visible ones, but such a view was unusual in philosophers of the period, for if the supreme God is altogether simple and is in no way made of ruler and rules, it is difficult to undersstand how any visible (and therefore material) body could be truly divine. Recognizing this, Alexandrian astronomers began to refer to the planets by their appearance rather than using the names of gods, since the mythological associations of the older practice were plain to them. ... Philosophers of this period devised a wide variety of ways of referring to the astral gods which emphasized their intermediate divine nature which was superior to the human condition but inferior to the supremely divine. Most of these ways of talking about the heavenly bodies stemmed from Plato and from the Epinomis." The Epinomis has been and sometimes still is ascribed to Plato, but some later scholars hold that while the Epinomis has something in common with Plato's later work, especially the Laws to which it is a kind of sequel, it appears to have been written by a follower of Plato, perhaps Philipp of Opus (Scott, p. 20). Scott sats (p. 20, 22) that "Emphasis on the importance of the heavens is carried to its furthest extreme in the Epinomis ... the Epinomis declares the wise man to be, not the philosopher, but the astronomer". As discussed in Chapter 1 of the present work, the word translated here as "astronomer" in previous times customarily denoted a kind of combination of what nowadays we call "astronomer" and what we call "astrologer".
U27. "One view which was frequent in Stoic and Platonic circles," says Scott, "was that as the stars were intermediate and subordinate gods, so they regulated an intermediate and subordinate providence. The idea as we have seen is implicit in Plato, Aristotle, and the Academy and , despite the ambiguity of the stars' relation to ether or God in Stoicism, it was taken over by Chrysippus, who believed that stars govern the world in accordance with providence. ... A common later expression of this is that there are different grades of providence, namely primary and secondary, and in some writers tertiary. Primary providence (that of the supreme God) sees to the beneficial arrangement of universals, while secondary providence operating through the stars sees to the generation and arrangement of that which is mortal and particular beneath the moon, and a tertiary providence is sometimes assigned to the daemons." (p. 61) Daemons, in this usage, refers to lesser deities, e.g. deified heroes, and not necessarily evil kinds of deities. At this point Scott comments on the relationship of philosophy and religion of the Hellenistic era to astrology. He says (p. 61-62): "This concept of the stars' activity is in part shaped by older ideas on the place of heaven in controlling generation and daily occurrences such as the weather, and was strengthened by the growth in importance of astrology in the Hellenistic period. Much of what was said in older philosophy helped pave the way for astrology, and despite some vigorous protests, both Stoicism and Platonism were thought by many of their later representatives to be compatible with this discipline. The combination of philosophy with astrology reaches it height in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, but it is already present in philosophy before Origen in the view that the stars exercise control over destiny (eimarmene). Thus a variety of factors were at work causing the stars to be ascribed with important functions concerning terrestrial life. This in turn increased the pressure on philosophers to give some account of their religious importance."
U28. Scott next, on his way to discussing works of Origen, comments on works of Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC - 40 AD), so far as they relate to opinions on the nature of stars and planets. His conclusion is: "He [Philo] follows the conventions of his day in honouring the stars but he is both too good a Jew and too good a Platonist to take this to its logical consequences. For all their glory, the stars are distinctly inferior to God, who is above heaven. The cosmological inconsistencies which were present individually in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoa come to a crescendo in Philo, and this happens in part because he is not able to criticize and correct his teachers, and because he has sometimes combined his sources in a clumsy way, but it has also happened because of his philosophical and religious integrity: he refuses to put anything (even the stars) on the same level as God. His efforts are of great importance for students of Origen, because Origen will follow him both in attempting to present a scriptural cosmology, and in placing strict limitations on the usual pagan religious understanding of heaven. One idea, however, which Origen adopts and which is not present in Philo or any of the classical philosophical schools is the recognition of the possibility of evil in heaven. This view, which is of great importance for Origen in understanding the place of the stars in the divine economy, gradually developed in Hellenism, and exerted a great influence on early Christianity. That the heavenly bodies affected the lilfe below was a philosophical commonplace, but our sources in the early imperil era are sharply divided about the nature of this influence." ( p. 74-75).
U29. Here are some excerpts from the works of Philo to illustrate his
beliefs about the stars, taken from the elegant Victorian translation of Philo's
works by C. D. Yonge, first published in 1854-1855. First, from a work
commonly known as On the Creation, although Yonge gives its complete
title as A Treatise on the Account of the Creation of the World, as Given by
Moses, we have:
"XVIII. (55) But the Creator having a regard to that
idea of light perceptible only by the intellect, which has been spoken of in the
mention made of the incorporeal world, created those stars which are perceptible
by the external senses, those divine and superlatively beautiful images, which
on many accounts he placed in the purest temple of corporeal substance, namely
in heaven. One of the reasons for his so doing was that they might give light;
another was that they might be signs; another had reference to their dividing
the times of the seasons of the year, and above all dividing days and nights, of
months and years, which are the measures of time; and which have given rise to
the nature of number. (56) And how great is the use and how great the advantage
derivable from each of the aforesaid things, is plain from their effect. But
with a view to a more accurate comprehension of them, it may perhaps not be out
of place to trace out the truth in a regular discussion. Now the whole of time
being divided into two portions day and night, the sovereignty of the day the
Father has assigned to the Sun, as a mighty monarch: and that of the night he
has given to the moon and to the multitude of the other stars. (57) And the
greatness of the power and sovereignty of the sun has its most conspicuous proof
in what has been already said: for he, being one and single has been allotted
for his own share and by himself one half portion of all time, namely day; and
all the other lights in conjunction with the moon have the other portion, which
is called night. And when the sun rises all the appearances of such numbers of
stars are not only obscured but absolutely disappear from the effusion of his
beams; and when he sets then they all assembled together, begin to display their
own peculiar brilliancy and their separate qualities.
"XIX. (58) And they have been created, as Moses tells us, not only that they might send light upon the earth, but also that they might display signs of future events. For either by their risings, or their settings, or their eclipses, or again by their appearances and occultations, or by the other variations observable in their motions, men oftentimes conjecture what is about to happen, the productiveness or unproductiveness of the crops, the birth or loss of their cattle, fine weather or cloudy weather, calm and violent storms of wind, floods in the rivers or droughts, a tranquil state of the sea and heavy waves, unusual changes in the seasons of the year when either the summer is cold like winter, or the winter warm, or when the spring assumes the temperature of autumn or the autumn that of spring. (59) And before now some men have conjecturally predicted disturbances and commotions of the earth from the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, and innumerable other events which have turned out most exactly true: so that it is a most veracious saying that "the stars were created to act as signs, and moreover to mark the seasons." And by the word seasons the divisions of the year are here intended. And why may not this be reasonably affirmed? For what other idea of opportunity can there be except that it is the time for success? And the seasons bring everything to perfection and set everything right; giving perfection to the sowing and planting of fruits, and to the birth and growth of animals. (60) They were also created to serve as measure of time; for it is by the appointed periodical revolutions of the sun and moon and other stars, that days and months and years are determined. And moreover it is owing to them that the most useful of all things, the nature of number exists, time having displayed it; for from one day comes the limit, and from two the number two, and from three, three, and from the notion of a month is derived the number thirty, and from a year that number which is equal to the days of the twelve months, and from infinite time comes the notion of infinite number. (61) To such great and indispensable advantages do the natures of the heavenly bodies and the motions of the stars tend. And to how many other things might I also affirm that they contribute which are as yet unknown to us? for all things are not known to the will of man; but of the things which contribute towards the durability of the universe, those which are established by laws and ordinances which God has appointed to be unalterable for ever, are accomplished in every instance and in every country." Here Philo says that astral or astrological prediction is feasible, inasmuch as one reason God created the stars and planets is to give us signs.
U30. On the other hand, Philo maintains elsewhere, in effect, that while
the stars and planets give us signs, they don't cause the events
which the signs indicate will or may happen. In this view, the stars and
planets are one way God communicates to humans. In an appendix to his
translation of the works of Philo, Yonge translates a treatise not found in the
now standard Loeb edition of Philo's works, with the title A Treatise
Concerning the World, we read:
"I. There is no existing thing equal in honour to God, but he is the one Ruler, and Governor, and King, to whom alone it is lawful to govern and regulate everything; for the verse- "A multitude of masters is not good,
"Let there one sovereign be, one king of all,"{1}{Homer, Iliad: 2.204.}
U31. So far as astral prediction is concerned, a basic distinction has often been made, from ancient times to the present, between celestial bodies having various kinds of powers of their own over human affairs and destinies, and celestial bodies furnishing signs, presumably related to non-astral powers which affect human affairs and destinies. Astrologers and astronomers have long been concerning with predicting the future. As I have argued in this work, and as many others have maintained, often enough in the past one and the same person who did this, or believed it possible to do this, engaged in or made use of activities concerned with predicting the future which in today's usual meanings of the terms astrologer and astronomer would be identified as both an astronomer and an astrologer. One of the differences today between people who are classified as an astrologer or as an astronomer lies in how each interprets celestial events and processes which they both are engaged in interpreting for purposes of predicting something which will or may happen in the future; another difference concerns which celestial events and processes exist to be interpreted for such a purpose. A common example concerns our earth's moon. Astronomers agree that there are techniques for predicting where the moon will be in the sky in the future of a given time, and what phase it will be in, with great accuracy. They also agree that the moon has at least one prominent power of affecting human affairs, namely a still quite mysterious power known as gravity or gravitation which, for example, exerts influences on the tides of the oceans which have to be taken into account for various human affairs. Actually, few astronomers or physicists would use the English term power to refer to gravitation. In non-relativistic mechanics, the term force is commonly used, and this is closely associated with what the term energy is used to denote. In relativistic mechanics, the situation is more complicated, one hears about such things as curvature of space, and the like. In what is often called classical celestial mechanics, Newton's Law of Gravity and Laws of Motion, along with an elaborate mathematical apparatus, are taken as the basis for predicting future positions and phases of the moon, as well as of the sun and other planets of our solar system, and many other celestial objects, from asteroids and comets up to constellations and galaxies. Gravitation, non-relativistically and relativistically interpreted, plays a major role in many other kinds of predictions by astronomers besides positions and phases of celestial objects, from what will happen tomorrow in connection with the energy output of our sun, energy which is of vital importance in human affairs, to what will happen tomorrow if you get too near a so-called black hole, and what will happen in the future to our solar system or to our universe as a whole which is even of some importance in connection with human affairs of tomorrow inasmuch as it may affect religious and philosophical beliefs which may in turn influence behavior of human and other kinds of individuals and groups, sometimes on a quite large scale.
U32. Astrologers, on the other hand, seldom pay attention to forces of gravity or curvature of space in making their predictions. A common complaint of present-day astronomers, physicists, cosmologists and the like is that astrologers can demonstrate no power of celestial objects and their processes which can account for what the astrologers claim are their influences on terrestrial creatures and their affairs. It is maintained by most physical scientists of today that gravitation, electromagnetic effects, nuclear forces, and the like, exerted by celestial objects (presumably other than our earth) have never been demonstrated to have the kind of influences on terrestrial affairs that present-day astrologers maintain they have. Astrologers often reply to this by observing that such influences by powers whose existence is accepted by physical scientists haven't been shown not to exist, or by observing that there may be or are powers not known to or not accepted by physical scientists which do have influences on terrestrial affairs of the sort they deal with. Arguments and disagreements of this sort have gone on since antiquity, and it doesn't look like they will be settled soon, or indeed ever. A thesis of the present work has been that in past times, what we now call astronomy and astrology were more interwoven than they customarily are today, although they still share some basic assumptions, e.g. about predicting future positions of celestial objects and the like. One consequence of this thesis, if it be accepted, is that what has happened in the development of astral prediction over time is a kind of specialization in connection with astral prediction, an effect which has been dominant in connection with all kinds of human affairs. Another consequence is that one may expect to see a kind of punctuated evolution in connection with astral prediction, rather than some kind of revolution in such matters. This has bearing on a familiar theme in history and philosophy of science, that of so-called scientific revolutions, and especially alleged "incommensurability" between theories and interpretations accepted in different eras, to use the term made popular by Thomas Kuhn. If by "incommensurability", one means existence of basic differences of the sort common to present-day astronomers and astrologers, one can empirically verify that such incommensurability exists. If by "incommensurability", one means that the nature of what is true about our universe between what present-day astronomers and astrologers hold can't be decided, one can empirically verify that it hasn't yet been decided. But, as I said near the beginning of this work, I won't be concerned here with matters of truth and falsity of what astronomers and astrologers say. I have reviewed here something about the relationship of past and present astronomy and astrology, and their practitioners and customers, in order to make a setting for the next chapter in the book by Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars (1991) which I have been considering, and I will now return to it, and in particular to Chapter 6, "The Heavenly Powers".
U33. Nowadays, to maintain seriously that what philosophers sometimes call the "mind-body" problem is closely related to problems of the nature and powers of celestial bodies would, at least in academic settings, be considered to be a kind of crackpottery. However, Scott observes that in the Hellenistic era, theories of "astral bodies" served to make a relationship of this kind. Scott says (p. 77, 78, 79.): " ... the existence of a substance which literally was on the boundary between the incorporeal noetic realm of God and the corporeal world of becoming helped explain how it was possible for the incorporeal soul to be joined to the corporeal body. The stars became a model for how humanity's divine rationality was related to the irrationality of the sublunary world. The belief began slowly to evolve that the soul was joined to the gody through the medium of an 'astral body'. ... Plato had written that corporeal vision occurs as a result of a fine, smooth, non-destructive fire which is emitted from the eye and combines with light, which is akin to it, forming a bond between the soul and that which is see, Light then is the medium between soul and the world. ... The later Platonic astral body theory suggests that the star which in the Phaedrus myth [presented by Plato in his dialogue of that name] acts as the soul's vehicle (schema) is in fact a reference to the luminous body which joins the soul and the physical body. The gap between mind and matter is bridged by positing a body of pneuma or light which is somehow related to both, just as physical vision unites the mind to the world. ... Only after Origen, in the tradition of interpretation which begins with Porphyry and his student Iamblichus, does Platonism begin to clarify the precise nature of the astral body both in heaven and existing as the vehicle for the human soul. At this later point, the astral soul becomes a tenet in systematic, neo-Platonic philosophy. But in Origen's day, the concept of the soul's astral vehicle was still an intellectual experiment which could be developed in several different ways."
U34. Scott goes on to discuss the relationship of such theories of union between the divine and the human by way of the stars to astrology as it was generally practiced and theorized about in the Hellenistic era. He says (p. 79): "A particularly important development in this experiment is the theory of a planetary component in the structure of the soul. The growth of interest in astrology in the Hellenistic era led to a special emphasis on the influence of the planets on the soul, since astrology is very much concerned with the effects of the various planetary positions on all generation." There was considerable discussion and disagreement among philosophers and theologians who accepted some version of an astral body theory as to whether or not, or in what cases and to what extent, the influences of the planets (including the sun and moon) on humans was benevolent or malevolent, good or evil. Nowadays, some of the terms for various schools of thought on these issues are gnosticism, hermeticism (as put forth in the Corpus hermeticum), neo-Platonism or just Platonism, and Mithraism (which Scott describes as a cross between Platonism and astrology, p. 109).
U35. And now, finally, we come to Origen, Scott's destination. On p. xvi of his introduction, Scott had said: "The final part [of this book] will investigate astronomy and astrology, and the ambitious use he made of the concept of living heavenly bodies in his theology. Specifically, attention will be given to the importance of the stars in understanding Origen's cosmology, theodicy, doctrine of the Fall, and eschatology." At this point we pass from so-called pagan or Jewish philosophers of the Hellenistic period to an early Christian philosopher or theologian, one of the acknowledged Fathers of the Church. Origen lived 186-232 A.D., and is thus one of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, i.e. before promulgation in 325 A.D. of the Nicene Creed which affirmed that Jesus Christ is of the same substance as God, and not, as Arius had claimed, unbegotten and an inferior deity to God. Origen is known for having attempted to integrate some main doctrines of pagan philosophy, especially as derived from works of Plato and his developers, with Christian doctrines based on the Holy Scriptures. In particular, in connection with astral worship, he affirmed numerous times, in various forms, that the stars are alive and rational, based on the fact that they move, and in an orderly manner. On the other hand, he emphasized that the stars were created, and thus not divine in the way God is, who is uncreated. Some stars are described as having "fallen", in a theological sense, because they had sinned. Thus they were, unlike God, capable of sin. The stars thus were considered by Origen to be ontologically somewhere between God and man. However, he denied that the stars were causes of good or evil in human affairs, although he stated that they were causes of the seasons (see below). Scott says: "Origen is familiar with the tradition which makes the heavenly bodies wrongdoers, and strongly opposes it. ... The Gospel of Matthew itself links the moon with the demonic possession that causes epilepsy (17:15), but Origen, citing this passage, goes to great lengths to show that this is not in fact due to the heavenly body but to the cunning of demons who observe the movements of the moon and also of the stars and plan their own evil deeds accordingly ... Origen thus denies the important contemporary belief that the planets or stars were malevolent. As part of the divine creation their nature is good." (p.143, 144). On the other hand, Origen believed that "There is a proper use for the signs of the heavens, and that is to refer to them in order to keep track of the change of seasons. In response to Celsus [a pagan philosopher], Origen defended the Stoic idea that the whole universe had been made for the benefit of humanity, and he thought that this was also true for the physical heavens. Along with earth, sea, winds, and rain, so too heaven, sun, moon, and stars were given by God to serve mankind. Like most of his pagan contemporaries, Origen assumed that the association of different stars in the sky with different seasons meant that the stars caysed the seasons and the changes in the weather that they brought. This also meant that the heavenly bodies produce all of the fruits of the earth for the human race to enjoy. Thus the stars had a central role in daily human affairs, though only in regulating the natural world and not in our moral and spiritual life." (p. 146)
U36. Origen was, however, opposed to the viewpoints of astrologers, which he took to involve denial of free will. Scott says, in agreement with what I presented in Chapter 1 of this work: "Astronomy and astrology are of course sharply distinguished in modern thought, but in antiquity the two words were used interchangeably. Most experts in one tended to be experts in the other -- Ptolemy is the classic example. Thus it is not surprising that Origen, who shows an interest in astronomy, is also familiar with astrology, even though he was strongly opposed to it." (p.119) On the other hand, Scott says: "The stars, however, had too strong a position both in contemporary philosophy and in the popular imagination to play no role whatsoever in shaping the life below. Connections between the moon and the movements of tides, or between the positions of the stars and the seasons, had long since been made, and this lent much credibility to astrological claims. The belief that one could foretell the future by studying the heavens was common wisdom in Alexandria ... Among both intellectuals and the unlearned, complete disbelief in astrological theory was scarcely credible in the third century." (p. 145) A middle way was, as had been done before, to believe that the stars were created to give signs to humanity. "Origen believed," says Scott, that the stars could act as signs of future events without causing them. He Christianizes this view, saying that the stars were signs of all that happens, in accordance with Genesis 1:14, 'let them be for signs,' and Jeremiah 10:2 'be not dismayed at the signs of heaven.' This was combined with his conviction that all things in this world were traceable, not to Fate, but to free will or to the dictates of Providence. ... Astrology is the mistaken use of this correlation between heaven and earth; one which (following ! Enoch [of the Aprocrypha] and Clement [of Alexandria, another ante-Nicene Father of the Church] is abetted by fallen angels." (p. 145, 146).
U37. Scott concludes (p. 167): "The ancient assumption that the stars are living beings has now passed away, but just as the sea retains its fascination, even though Poseidon no longer dwells in it, so too the celestial regions without their ancient gods. Kant declared his awe at the starry heavens above and the moral law within, recognizing in each case that we are in the presence of something great. The modern age no longer believes that the stars have souls, but astronomical progress has not robbed them of their power. The farthest created things, our own nearest self, these two remain mysteries to us. Observing both we are indeed on the boundary of another land." One may dispute Scott's statement, or implication, that there are no people any longer who believe that the stars in some sense are alive and have souls, with "souls" defined suitably, although this is not so in the standard academies of our present-day world, at least in some regions of the world. Scott is certainly right to say that the farthest created things, or for that matter some of the nearer ones, too, remain in many ways mysterious, and that our selves, our conscious selves, likewise remain in many ways mysterious to all of us who are sufficiently open to mysteries.