Astrology

“ Astrology furnishes a magnificent proof of this miserable subjective tendency in men, which leads them to see everything only as bearing upon themselves, and to think of nothing that is not straightway made into a personal matter. The aim of astrology is to bring the motions of the celestial bodies into relation with the wretched Ego and to establish a connection between a comet in the sky and squabbles and rascalities on earth.35 ”

“ Astrology spread the belief, which was and is common to all ancient and modern peoples of the East, that each soul has a predetermined number of years to spend on earth. The mathematici multiplied calculations and methods in order to be able to predict the instant of death predetermined by the horoscope. “This is the great work of astrology, held by its adepts to be its most difficult and by its enemies to be its most dangerous and blameworthy operation.” ”

“ The stars are in human thought a symbol for the silent forces of destiny, really embodied in forms beyond our apprehension; for who shall say what actual being may or may not correspond to that potentiality of life or sensation which is all that the external world can be to our science? When astrology invented the horoscope it made an absurdly premature translation of celestial hieroglyphics into that language of universal destiny which in the end they may be made to speak. ”

“ Now Astrology, while employing all the elements of astronomy that have any certain foundation in fact, is calculated as a study to engage all the highest faculties of the human mind, while it brings to the results obtained the added virtue of utility. ”

“ It was from my aged grandfather that I learned my first lessons in astrology—about the twelve houses, the ruling star of each day, the coming and the going of the planets, their conjunctions and oppositions, and the influences they exercise on men's lives. ”

“ The general belief in astrology in the Middle Ages left us several words of this class. Though we no longer believe that the position of the stars can affect our fortunes, we still use the word ‘disaster,’ in the sense of a calamity or misfortune. From the same source come the adjectives, ‘jovial,’ ‘mercurial,’ ‘martial,’ and ‘saturnine.’ These express qualities supposed to belong to those heathen gods whose names were given to the constellation under which any one was born. In astrological phraseology a man’s fortune is still said to be in the ascendant, or to culminate. ”

“ Our study of the opinions of the ancients on the various phenomena of astronomy, leads us inevitably to the discussion of their astrology, which has in every age and among every people accompanied it—and though astrology be now no more as a science, or lingers only with those who are ignorant and desirous of taking advantage of the still greater ignorance of others—yet it is not lacking in interest as showing the effect of the phenomena of the heavens on the human mind, when that effect is brought to its most technical and complete development. ”

“ Those who pretend to reduce the practice of Astrology to a system, present the world with certain schemes formed upon the Aspects of the planets, and attribute certain qualities or powers to each sign. Thus, to discover the influence of the heavens over the life of a person, they erect a THEME, at the given time of the moment the person was born, by which the Astrologers pretend to discover the star that presided, or in what part of the hemisphere it was placed, when the individual came into the world. ”

“ Astrology was divided into three distinct branches—the doctrine of nativities, horary astrology, and state astrology. The first assigned the rules for determining the general fortunes of the native, by drawing up his scheme of nativity or casting his horoscope. ”

“ Add to this the even more potent belief of the people in astrology. The planets and the stars, the moon and the nodes are living gods, they say, which wield an influence over the life and destiny of human beings. The astrologer is perhaps the most important functionary in the social and religious life of the people. No marriage can be performed unless the [218] horoscope of the bride and the bridegroom harmonize. ”

“ Astrology is the most ambitious of such efforts in both design and scope of application. The three persistent motives in this world-wide and world-old expression—a composite of primitive culture, superstitious survivals, and pseudo-scientific elaboration—seem to be the cure of disease, the reading of character, the fore-knowledge of the future and in all, the control of fate. ”

“ Take astrology, for example. In the course of several thousand years, the precession of the equinoxes has put the Sun into entirely different celestial houses—signs of the Zodiac—at the same times of year. ”

“ So also respecting astrology, provided there is any such thing as futurity to be learned from it, it would be altogether a natural discovery; for neither astronomy nor astrology claim anything of a miraculous or supernatural kind, but their calculations are meant to be predicated on the order and course of nature, with which our senses are conversant, and with which inspiration or the mere cooperation of spirits is not intended to act as part. ”

“ WE'RE taking up astrology quite seriously—our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know—and we've hired the loveliest lady astrologer to cast our horoscopes and give us a talk and get us started right. ”

“ The sun manifestly rules all things; the waxing and waning of the moon must strengthen and weaken all things; the signs of the Zodiac are certainly connected with the seasons; the planets partake of the nature of the gods. [571] If there are gods they must, as the Stoics argued, have some way of communicating with men; and what way can be more congruous with their nature than by writing on the face of the heavens? But generally the ideas of Astrology were magical rather than animistic. ”

“ Availing themselves of the general adoration of the stars, they appear to have invented a system of astrology—the apotelesmatic science—by which they professed to decide upon the nature of coming events and the complexion of individual fortunes, with especial reference to the planetary aspects. ”

“ ASTROLOGY. Astrology was one of the modes most anciently and universally resorted to for discovering the fortunes of men and nations. Astronomy and astrology went hand in hand, particularly among the people of the East. The idea of fate was most especially bound up in this branch of prophecy. If the fortune of a man was intimately connected with the position of the heavenly bodies, it became evident that little was left to the province of his free will. ”

“ The rigorous principles of astrology determined its conception of heaven and earth.
The universe was an organism animated by a God, unique, eternal and almighty. Sometimes this God was identified with the destiny that ruled all things, with infinite time that regulated all visible phenomena, and he was worshiped in each subdivision of that endless duration, especially in the months and the seasons. ”

“ Astrology represents the climax of the argument by analogy, fully systematized and calling into play many of the resources of modern learning. What is so clearly represented in astrology appears to a less extent in other pseudo-scientific systems; notably in palmistry and phrenology. It captivates the well-informed as well as the ignorant, it appeals to minds that are strong as well as those that are weak, and emphasizes the pricelessness of our scientific inheritance and the necessity of guarding it by the cultivation of sound logical habits of thought. ”

“ In effect we make final reference to Astrology as the only means of scientific foreknowledge known to man, and in this we must include the physical phenomena which have direct relation to astronomical facts as well as anything we may argue concerning the action of the planets upon the minds of men and the disposition of human affairs. Astrology lends itself readily to experimental test. ”

“ To the superficial view, the whole system of astrology will appear as a vexatious error of mankind; to the deeper observation, however, there is discernible not only the fund of astronomical knowledge acquired, but also a purer sentiment lying at the basis of all, acknowledging man's dependence upon higher powers. ”

“ Astrology, as a science and a system of divination, exerted a profound influence over the mediaeval mind. No court was without its practicing astrologer and the universities all had their professors of astrology. The practice of astrology was an essential part of the physician’s profession, and before prescribing for a patient it was thought quite as important to determine the positions of the planets as the nature of the disease. ”

“ Astrology was necromancy at one time, but has become astronomy in modern times, and I look upon the efforts which were made in former times by astrologists as the planting of the germs of the celestial science. ”

“ In this connection Astrology affirms that persons are born with particular horoscopes because when the heavens are so disposed as to admit of, and indeed to favour, the expression of certain forms of genius and faculty, the Soul requiring those conditions is borne into earth-life. The doctrine involves the suggestion that there is a purpose in human existence and that such purpose is neither 259begun nor fulfilled in any one incarnation. ”

“ Perhaps the astonishing variety of the influences that the celestial bodies, from ancient until modern times, were supposed to exercise over the world and the life of mankind can be accounted for by imagining some such process of thought to have been involved in the beginnings of astrology. ”

“ Man meditated, speculated, concluded, until the required sidereal relation of each organ and each function of the human body was determined. Thus astrology may serve as one of the most telling examples of scientific delusions to which the ancient diagnostico-theoretical methods were bound to lead, with [137] their conclusions from analogy and their deductive modes of procedure.
The above survey indicates, altho only in very general outlines, the origin of astrology. We shall now consider more in detail the acquisition for which the art of medicine is especially indebted to astrology. ”

“ Astrologers make no claim to any degree of special inspiration. They merely argue from like causes to like effects, finding illustration of the law of periodicity in lunations, transits, eclipses and revolutional ingresses, which, being connected in experience with a certain succession of events, are found to produce events of a similar nature whenever they recur. Astronomy gives us the periodic values of these several factors, while Astrology supplies an interpretation from experience. Nothing could be more scientific or more satisfactory. ”

“ It places the thoughtful student in an entirely new position with regard to many of the deeper problems of existence, and it is certainly the fact that to those who newly come to its study, Astrology is a revelation, an enlightenment, and a conviction from which there is no possible or desirable escape. ”

“ So must we consult man for heaven and heaven for man, his lines, his indications, whether derived from this celestial House or the other. For which reason I believe in astrology as in chiromancy, since both guide me to the association of a particular humour in a patient’s blood with its corresponding cause and remedy, they all being contained in his nativity, or horoscope, that is to say—man and season and herb alike. ”

“ What exact science owes to astrology is well known, how in Chaldæa the places of the stars were systematically observed and recorded for portents of battle and pestilence, and registers of lucky and unlucky days. ”

“ To apply oneself to the specialization of inherent faculty, to find the line of least resistance, and to discover the measure of one’s own soul in the universe and the limit to which ambition can safely aspire, these are things necessary to be known and things that Astrology makes clear to the mind in the very earliest stages of our study. ”

“ If we would gain a correct knowledge of astral science we should study astrology in its universal application, side by side with its more intricate phase and the details, as manifested upon the individual man and his material destiny. ”

“ Progress became possible only when science essayed to explain observed phenomena by depending on natural causation.
For ages the superstitions of astrology ruled the world by the terror that they inspired. The figure of a man, with entrails exposed, in the front of the family almanac is a survival of Egyptian astrology. ”

“ A sober examination of the subject may rather justify the contrary opinion, that it is on an error of the first order that astrology depends, the error of mistaking ideal analogy for real connexion. Astrology, in the immensity of its delusive influence on mankind, and by the comparatively modern period to which it remained an honoured branch of philosophy, 129may claim the highest rank among the occult sciences. ”

“ But between the premiss of a possible influence of the heavenly bodies,and the theory and practice of astrology with its systematised interpretation of that influence, yawns the gulf which modern science attempts to bridge. ”

“ The planets operate on human affairs in terms of human thought and action, and that by fixed laws; never adventitiously. That “the Gods help those who help themselves” to the extent that natural laws permit, is a truth which astrology fully provides for. ”

“ For sceptical minds, astrology, in French, so oddly termed astrologie judiciare, is nothing more than a cunning device for making a profit out of one of the strongest of all the instincts of human nature—to wit, curiosity. ”