BRIEF
HISTORY OF ASTROLOGY. AN INTRODUCTION
Introduction. Paleolithic
astrology. Birth as science in the
Introduction
We begin making a sketch of how it was born, expanded and become to its
declivity astrological science, resorting to historians and trustworthy sources;
between the reasons so that Astrology provokes so many mistrusts and smiles of
self indulgence they are the ignorance and interested opinions existing on the
subject, that in some cases remain by pure inertia.
The science of the judgments of stars - therefore they call some works
dedicated to it - has been remarkable and substantial part in the development of
the human knowledge; so, it was considered and always enjoyed of great prestige.
It was not until centuries XVII and XVIII when it was evacuated of European
universities.
As all human knowledge has undergone cyclical happening of History, with
its bumps, but in the periods of splendour of the cultures that developed,
Astrology were cultivated by the intellectual elites of those times. From
Astrology, we cannot forget it, was born Astronomy as we know it in the present
time, although we do not have to forget that, in general terms, as much
Astrology as Astronomy were both synonymous terms until century XVII.
It is not a hastic affirmation ours, historians confirm it and we can
verify themselves in the libraries (1)
Astrology basically deals with the influences of the stars on the Earth.
The “natural " part, dedicated to the study of chronology,
measurement of the time, annual climatic cycle, etc., has never been prohibited;
Saint Isidore of Seville, in his Etimologias, finds it totally
legitimate and worthy of study. However, the one that deals with the destiny of people, kings
and nations, has always got in troubles, and that for diverse reasons.
To make predictions for a governor has always been jeopardize; in other
cases the problem of fate has always arisen questions of philosophical,
theological or religious type. The Cordovan Jew Maimonides, that studied it and
had a deep knowledge about the subject, wrote against this type of
" divinatory" Astrology in its work On Astrology. Letter
to the Jews of Montpellier (2) exclusively dedicated to
discredit it. Geminus, by beginning of our Era, already claims in its Introduction
to the phenomena (3) against those who attribute
to stars and not to the effect of the Sun the algid periods of heat and cold
that takes place in the annual cycle (from that false belief comes the dog
days, when the heat of the summer at that moments was associated to
simultaneously risings of the Sun and the Greater Dog).
In any case, if we want to approach to the problem, the best thing will
be to resort to the written sources and verifiable facts, and not to mere
hypotheses or prejudices. Because these last ones, as Voltaire said, are
the reasons of stupids.
Paleolithic astrology
It can seem surprising to speak of science of stars in the Paleolithic
period (-35,000 to -10,000 approximately); but, according to the archaeological
and historical investigations and findings are advancing, the knowledge of the
humanity in those times surprise enormously those who, by ignorance or
simpleness had to the men of that time by gross and ignorants.
We must not talk of paleolithic astronomical science in the sense that
this word has now, although there is no doubt that they were times in which the
Moon constituted the great chronometer of the humanity (lunar chronology). The
paleolithic tribes, with a low density of population, were nomadic, so the only
valid temporary reference for them was the Moon, as much to choose the suitable
moments of hunting and fishes (here the light of our satellite is important), as
fixing the celebrations, encounter with other tribes for interchanges, and, of
course, to compute the time.
The lunar chronology is based on the cycle of 27.5 days (approximately
28) that takes the Moon in crossing the stellar belt that serves as reference to
determine its revolution; since
every night is visible on a star group and to the next one it is had displaced
towards others located more to the left of the observer, there is no doubt that
the nightly observation of this path originated the first Zodiac of stellar
reference, which later was known as “lunar Mansions" or " Dwellings
" in Europe (Middle Ages), introduced by the Arabs, who took it from
Persians, Indians and also probably of China, a nation with very old
astronomical calculations.
The Zodiac is a Greek term that means " animal way ";
the Greek Zodiac, that still we use today, has some human figures (Gemini,
Virgo and Aquarius). The Chinese Zodiac, however, only consists of 12 animals,
so we might suppose it is previous, and possibly it has its origin in the
Paleolithic (importance of hunting in the economy of that time).
Without any doubt the system of " lunar dwellings ", that are
28, is older (28 are the nights of
the lunar month in which our satellite is visible on the fixed star background).
Considering that the day of the New Moon our satellite is not visible in
the sky, we have a total cycle of 29 days (the cycle of phases consists very
approximately of 29.5 days).
In the famous cave of Altamira (Cantabria, Spain) they are counted up to
27, 28 or 29 bisons, that are painted on the ceiling and we need to watch
upwards as in the cupola of a church (where also we see represented suns, moons
and stars next to angels and saints, God and the Virgin Maria, etc.).
Bisons are strongly coloured in red and ocher, others do not have colour
(perhaps they have lost it), adding a total of 21 animals; the others have black
colour. All of them do not present
the same size; there is one greater than the rest, perhaps symbolized the Full
Moon. If such interpretation is suitable, the black, dark and small would be
representative of the days previous and followings to the New Moon, when our
satellite is scarcely visible.
The interested reader can find published on this exciting subject the
doctoral thesis of Luz Antequera in Hispanic Arqueoastronomy.
Astronomical practices in Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula and the
Archipelagoes Balearic and Canary.
This author interprets the great bull of the cave of Lascaux (Dordogne,
France) as the constellation of Taurus; we
can see a set of points in the same position that the Pleiades on the sky. If
such interpretation is correct, we would have to suppose that, in the days of
lunar chronology, it would be the time at which the first New Moon of the year (winter
solstice) took place next to this stellar group.
In comparison of cycles, the winter (minimum solar illumination) is
equivalent to the New Moon.
The fact that reinforces this idea is that in classic Egypt the Sirius
star (Greater Dog) constituted the " home of the Moon ", when at the
present, during the New Moon of winter solstice, our satellite is very far from
that star, the main one of the sky. Made the calculations (precession of the
equinoxes), the New Moon near the winter solstice took place next to Sirius in
-11.500, approximately the date of
There is no doubt that the alternation between day/night, activity/rest,
ascending phase of the Sun/ descendent phase, added to the cycle of lunar phases,
very early instilled in the humanity the notion of duality and cyclical nature
of most of observable natural phenomena. The Paleolithic was a long time
dominated by the lunar chronology, so the importance of the feminine divinity
and associated ctonics cults. The
reckoning of the month began by the appearance of the New Moon (in Greek
“neomenia”, literally " new month"), as we see at the present
between Muslims and Jews. The caves
dedicated to observation and lunar cults that still last have to be oriented
therefore towards the West, that is by where every month “is born
the Moon”. Therefore, the
day begins for the Jews (lunar chronology) at sunset (also it did in many places
of
We can see lunar calculations in the " marks of hunting of Marshack
", some bones with groups of 7 notches (lunar phases);
in the “Venus of Laussel” we can see a horn (Moon) with 13 incisions,
and in the rattlesnake of the Aztecs, 13 rings in the tail, etc. Here we are
represented the 13 annual lunations (in fact 12 and a part, equivalent to an
average of 354 days and fraction).
But the long paleolithic period finished with the climatic catastrophe of
-10.000; Europe melted, and great cataclysms and alterations of the atmospheric
circulation began to dry the
Birth as science in the Fertile Crescent
With the arrival of
Neolithic the populations became sedentary, and pasturing and agriculture were
necessary for subsistence. Such
activities require the consideration of a solar calendar to guide themselves in
the date of sowings, agricultural tasks, times of beginning and end of
trashumance, etc. In order to
elaborate a chronology we can take every day as reference the points of sunrise
and sunset for populations of fixed residence (peaks and crests of the
mountainous horizon, etc.), because such points describe an annual oscillation.
The end points determine the solstices of winter and summer; both
equinoxes can be known easily with approach, observing the shadow of a vertical
stick at sunrise and sunset, because both form an air line those days (the rest
of the year gives it irregular). Months
will be continued calculating by the Moon, at least until beginnings of ours
Era.
As much the nomadic populations as the sedentary ones can guide
themselves in the annual time by another clock, the one of the risings and
settings of stars at dusk or at dawn; note
that here also the horizon is taken as reference, very import in Astrology. “To get orientated” comes from " Orient” (the
East), " to look for the East ", which is in agreement with the main
point of a horoscope, that is, the Ascendent (intersection of the Ecliptic or
“way of the Sun” with the Eastern horizon).
Note also that horoscope, term of Greek origin, means " to calculate
or to analyze the hour ".
The calendar of risings and settings of stars has been the third great
clock of the humanity for guide itself in the annual time, and also in
navigation by sea, all time and place. Today, in the big cities, scarcely can be
contemplated the sky by night, and even in the country observation is difficult
because of luminous contamination. Here we are the cause that citizens are
aliens to the sky and absolutely unconscious of stellar influences.
Astrology could never arise from urban societies as ours; however,
observation of stars in the country or cities without hardly nocturnal
illumination, allowed to the populations of Antiquity a generalized knowledge of
the sky, stimulating in them the feeling and the sensation to live united to the
movement and evolution of cosmic cycles.
The first stars that appear by the Eastern horizon or disappear by the
western one, at dusk and dawn, are a good reference to guide people in the
annual time; watching the sky at a determined moment we can realize that
it turns a degree towards the West every day, so that some stars go appearing
and others disappearing day after day. The
one that appeared today it will disappear after six months exactly and vice
versa; some appear with the warmest days, others with coldest, some other with
the arrival of rains, periods of winds or calm, others with the time of fervour
of certain animals or childbirth, with the wheat harvest or the vintage, etc.
From those experiences arose the feeling that the sky influences the
terrestrial events and human happening (astrological thought).
The transition to the Neolithic forced to a greater observation of the
sky, the Sun and the Moon, as well as of a fixed horizon.
When the first urban sprawls in Mesopotamia arose, next to the great
rivers (Eufrates and
By 1100 B.C. we have star lists called " of astrolabes ", in
fact a calendar of risings and settings of stars, containing the " Way of
the Moon ", positions of the Sun with respect to the cardinal points
throughout the year, movements of planets and their cycles, weather forecasts,
etc.
The so called at present " theorem of Pithagore " is not Greek,
but mesopotamic, and the same occurs with the metonic cycle (repetition of the
phases of the Moon the same date after 19 years), that takes the name of Greek
astronomer Meton but it is well established that was determined before by
Babylonian priests. Religion and
astronomy went united side by side in that historical period, for that reason
the observations and conjectures of mathematical and scientific type were
carried out in well structured sacerdotal schools.
We know planetary predictions from eclipses, conjunctions for the kings
(omens). For example, Tablet 63,
that contains a complete list of observations of heliacal risings and settings
of Venus during 21 successive years, with auguries, begin as it follows:
If 15 Sabatu Venus disappears by the west, remaining invisible 3 days,
and 18 Sabatu it appears by the east, catastrophes for the kings;
Adad will bring rains, Ea underground waters; the king will send salutings to the king. (5)
At that time stars were considered as Gods, and, in fact, Astronomy was
used to interpret the divine will; in the poem
Enuma Anu Elish it is told that Gods, after the creation of the world,
felt tired and delegated in men the continuity of his work.
For that reason as much in Sumeria, Acadia, Chaldea and Babylonia, and
also in
It is this mitification which has been able to deceive some investigators
(and late deciphering of clay tablets written in cuneiform alphabet) that
attributed to the Greeks and his logical-philosophical genius what legitimately
we know now belongs to creators of the astrological patrimony of the humanity,
the cultures of the
We can see it words of one of the Spanish pioneers of the History of
Science:
Until in the present days, of specialized maturity investigation, it
has been possible to constitute with all the guarantees of a scientific
discipline, the new called discipline History of Science, the vision that had of
the evolution and the genesis of this one, as well as of the scientific legacy
of the different cultures, it is very far from being able to call joust.
Without with it we want to prejudge that our vision is definitively
right. In general, that vision was
partial, as much by defect of historical perspective, as by influences comings
of the field of the religion or the politics, with its rivalries and factions,
or of the philosophy with its multiple schools, all this disturbed the straight
judgment of the facts… (6)
Perhaps this partiality of judgment has to do with our Greek and Roman
cultural ancestry (rather of the former, because it is known
... This exaggerated interpretation of the Greek
miracle and the scientific incapacity of other
cultures of the antiquity and the Middle Ages was elaborated between the people
of the French Encyclopaedia and the nineteenth-century rationalism, and received
force, according to before we have alluded, of philosophical, religious and
political interferences, absolutely external to the straight critical judgment (7)
Not only appeared for the first time in the Middle East the phonetic
writing and the place value notation of duodecimal and sexagesimal base (this
last tied to the necessity of astronomical calculations purely scientist ns);
appearance of big cities, together with intense commercial interchanges,
favoured at first mercantile
Arithmetic, and later abstractions of purely scientist character.
Trigonometry was born as a instrumental way to the service of
astronomical calculations.
Otto Neugebauer, who was professor of the University of Brown, showed (8)
in
the decade of 1930 the high level that Mathematics reached between Chaldeans and
Babylonian; arithmetical series, square and cubical roots, tables of reciprocal
numbers, problems of simple and
compound interest, problems equivalents to resolution of equations of second and
third degree, geometric problems of areas and volumes, etc., are in clay
tablets.
The place value position, essential for calculations and the development
of science, was lost between Greek and Roman, and the scientific development did
not take great steps. The Mayans
also invented an analogous numeration, allowed them calendaric precisions
(mathematical) comparable. With its
reintroduction in
Observation of the sky in the
If already there were an intuitive sensation of attachment to the cosmos
between farmer populations (annual, vegetative climatic cycle, fauna, etc.), the
long astronomical observations led to the priests to establishments of superior
order, in which the origin of Astrology as science must be searched for.
Priest-observers stated that the cycle of lunar phases is repeated with
much approach after 19 years (and therefore the cycle of the oceanic tides,
etc.); the same occurs with the conjunctions of Venus and the Sun,
that repeat every 8 years just by two days of delay. Such discoveries allowed the first astronomical predictions
without great mathematical calculations. We
will see more ahead the physical interpretation of this fact and its possible
repercussions in the alive beings and the integral parts of the great organism
that is the Earth.
The European Middle Age retook these cycles brought by the Arabs and
named great, middle and small years, according to the degree of precision; but
the origin of this knowledge, again, we found it in the Middle East and not in
Jupiter
71
6 years rev. tropical = 65 synodic periods
Jupiter
83
7 years rev. tropical = 76
" "
Venus
8
8 years rev. tropical = 5 "
"
Mercury
46
46 years rev. tropical = 145 "
"
Saturn
59
2 years rev. tropical = 57
" "
Mars
47
25 years rev. tropical = 22 "
"
Mars
79
42 years rev. tropical = 37 "
"
Moon
19 years
Until now, first horoscope available, found in a cuneiform tablet, is the
one of 12-13/01/-409. Demetrio
Santos, translating On nativitatibus, of
the Arab Albubather, found another that, analyzed the offered astronomical data,
calculations give for it the date of -1114. (9)
This
continues delaying once more the dating of scientist knowledge , in a tendency
that does not seem to stops. Such
horoscope provides the positions of the Ascendent, M.C., Full Moon previous to
the birth of the boy, Lot of Fortune and seven visible planets to naked eye.
We see that it gives the positions of more important angles (oriental and
meridian, that is, approximately, rising points and culmination of the stars),
the ones of the seven planets, the one of the previous lunation to the birth and
a complex point whose present mathematical meaning is the one of vectorial sum
of two waves (Lot of Fortune).
Another great achievement of middle eastern science was the invention of
the Zodiac of 12 equal signs, that, in spite of its present name, is of Greek
origin either. The Babylonian Zodiac was stellar, unlike the Greek, that took as
references the fictitious points from solstices and equinoxes.
The knowledge of Geometry led to the Greek astronomers to the discovery
of the tropical Zodiac, and, with the calculations and measures that it allowed
them, the precession of the equinoxes.
According to B.L. van der Waerden, in his article History of the
Zodiac, published in
The twelve zodiacal signs appear for the first time in planetary text
VAT 4924 by 419 B.C. The Babylonian
signs are of equal size... Lunar
and planetary tablets, in which each sign contains 30°
confirm
the conclusion that the signs have equal size.
(10)
It talks about signs and not about constellations, as demonstrate the
analyses of the investigators who have studied the text.
The first systematized and structured Zodiac is therefore of Babylonian
origin, and takes as references the fixed stars.
It does means that they ignored the phenomenon of the equinoxes and
solstices; nevertheless, for that culture the exact determination of this point
was not important. They preferred stellar references, that were those that
better knew by their long experience in the knowledge of the firmament.
An error of 2 or 3 days in the observation of the equinox takes to
another of about 8 minutes in the duration of the day, something that did not
worry too much to Babylonian priests.
The importance of the science of the influence of the stars at this time
is summarized by Demetrio Santos in the following paragraph of Introduction
to the History of the Astrology:
We can say that the period from -1200 to -400 marks the Golden
age of astrology, when more
important advances and their fullness were obtained.
It begins with the expansion of the metallurgy of iron and the Phoenician
phonetic writing and with it an intensification of the cultural evolution.
But the ostracism in which astrology has been sunk in the past Century [
XIX-XX ] in the West has caused that lacked its investigation in the European
scientific blossom, and was not made a serious study of old texts related to
astrology. Nevertheless, all the
data that we have at the moment converge to indicate their summit in the time
and place of the mesopotamic cultures. (11)
The transplant to
As much Greek as Roman had an enormous respect by " the ancients
", when talked about the knowledge that came to them from the of East; if
Greek science and philosophy, base of all European and western knowledge, were
lost with the fall of the Roman Empire, it is easy to imagine what happened to
the enormous amount of works that were generated in Mesopotamia throughout more
than 2,000 years. The major part of
them disappeared, and the rest could not have been deciphered until the
beginnings of century XX; even so, cuneiform
tablets can furnish to us surprising discoveries.
If we know enough middle eastern science it is because was transplanted
to
It must grant that we can know the effects that the twelve signs, the
Sun, the Moon and the five planets have on the course of the human life from the
astrology and the calculations of the Chaldeans.
The geneatliac art, that allows them to discover passed and future events
by means of astronomical calculations, is properly theirs. There are many that have arisen between the Chaldean culture
and have left us their discoverie, which are full of sharpness and wisdom. The
first was Beroso, that settled down
in the island of Cos and there taught. (12)
All Western Astrology that we know summarizes in the compilation that
carried out Claudius Ptolemy in century II;
their astronomical model of the world, geography and optics, even a
treaty on harmonics, dominated the intellectual panorama until the European
Renaissance. Ptolemy lived and made its work in
We cannot consider Ptolemy an original man, and he does not try it
either; he makes reference, when he
knows them, to the sources, or always gives them as unknowns but previous to
him. He managed to compile, mainly
in Astrology, the knowledge of his time and precedents, giving them coherent
form and making them comprehensible, since he himself did not get to understand
his real foundation and, before the difficulty, he rationalizes the facts
treating to explain them...
In spite of everything, Astrology begins in the West
suddenly ex- nihilo with Ptolemy, and in 1.800 years of history nothing
new at all is invented on the
matter, except small improvements
and astronomical adjustments for the tables of movements of planets and to fix
the positions of stars that had
varied by the movement of Precession of the Equinoxes.
And probably it occurred in that way because its text reflects what it
was in his time the great
astrological culture of the Middle East, in special of Babylon, and his book
constitutes a window, the only one, opened to such knowledge, having itself
arrived at unremovable empirical rules that were useful. (13)
Beyond Ptolemy little thing has arrived until us somewhat different from
his Tetrabible. Shortly
before him we have Astronomicon, of Marcus Manilius, written in the firsts years of
ours Era; Carmen astrologicum, of Doroteo de Sidon, that also lived in century
I, etc. But we already see in those
works a science in clear decay, and about this the astrologers in the Middle
Ages will complain when verifying the existing discords between diverse authors.
We know through Diodorus (2, 29) the way in which learned the Chaldeans,
unlike of Greeks, perhaps one of the necessary keys to understand the high
levels at that they arrived in scientific matter:
The Chaldean philosophy is of familiar tradition; the son who inherits
it of his father is free of all public obligation.
As the teachers are their own parents, they have advantage to learn
without limits all those knowledge and to give greater credit to the words of
its teachers. Accustomed to the study from the childhood, they advance quickly
in astrology because of the facility whereupon it is learned to that age, or
because they have more years to study... The
Chaldeans, always maintaining the same science, receive, without altering, the
tradition; the Greeks, on the other hand... contradict among them about the most
important doctrines (14)
A safe reference to know these subjects is the monumental work of Auguste
Bouché-Leclercq, L'astrologie grecque, published
in 1899 and reedited in 1979; but,
in the summit of rationalist delirium, contains commentaries as the following
one, that give some idea about the climate of hostility against the science of
the influence of the stars at that time:
What is truth of superstitions
in general it is also with greater reason of
astrology, that somewhat has tried to connect
exact sciences as " mathematics”, the most adventurous efforts of
the imagination. Astrology, once died - I believe that it is, in spite of the
attempts made recently for vivify it- has been dealt with a disdain that does
not have comparison with other questions of historical importance infinitely
smaller (15)
We will return to this author, leaving aside some slippings as that we
have exposed. Meanwhile, we
remember that we are talking of the epoch that Rome dominated all the
Mediterranean basin; later it
arrived the Christianity, intellectual heir of Roman expansionism, the fall of
the Empire and the barbarization of Europe.
To Greek science, characterized by high mathematical and philosophical
speculations, followed a period more inclined towards the mysticism. Knowledge
preferably were obtained by intuition or illumination (teurgy, contact with the
divinity). They were times in which
neoplatonism, hermeticism and the gnosis, revived.
The science of the influence of the stars, been born next of Religion and
Magic (time of sidereal religions, sabeus period), also lost part of its
rational component and inclined towards aspects hardly imaginable for us at the
present time. The Christianity, on
the other hand, adopted the cosmology of this time, immersed in astrological
base. But Christianity did not show special inclination towards the rational
science and sank in the mystical flow of the first centuries of our Era. Here we
are the cause of the strong ideological conflicts that it had with the paganism,
that in some occasions finished in blood baths.
Within the Roman Church the only bond that was with rational science was
the necessity to be able to calculate correctly calculate the first Full Moon of
the spring, essential requirement to celebrate Passover in accordance with the
norms dictated in Council of Nicea (year 322).
It was a problem that lasted centuries without solving suitably, which
gives some idea of the precariousness of medieval astronomical calculations. To
carry out the reform of the calendar in year 45 B.C., and to date Passover after
Council of Nicea, as much Julio Caesar as the Popes resorted to alexandrines
astronomers, that is, Greeks, which illustrate where were settled the best
scientist at those epochs.
After the fall of the Roman Empire,
Saint Isidore of
In this unfavourable climate to the rational knowledge the emperor
Justinianus commanded to close by real decree the old Greek schools of
philosophy in 529, although hardly if they already taught some neoplatonism
bathed of mysticism and Christian elements.
The little of the old knowledge that remained took refuge in the
monasteries, waiting for more propitious times in
The Arabs and their transmission to
The collapse of the science and the ways of life was general; at the same
time that culture and science reached in Europe their lower level, in Bizancio
and the countries of the Near and Middle East - Syria, zone of the Persian Gulf
- survived a remarkable cultural center, mixture of Greek, Roman and Jewish
elements. One of its first centers was the Persian
In this place the Greek science and philosophy were recovered, and
simultaneously made contact with the ones of
We have the arc of mid point and barrel vault in romanic architecture
(planetary concentric spheres of Eudoxus), mozarab (eccentric of Ptolemy),
planetary epicycles (cloister of Saint John of Duero, in Soria, Spain), Jupiter
in front door of Saint Peter’s Rúa, in Estella (Navarre, Spain), with his
eleven lobes (the ones that it draws up the planet in the sky during a complete
revolution zodiacal), etc. The
medieval temple reproduces on scale the macrocosmos (planetary skies), trying to
imitate its effect on the man; for that reason it is constructed on the basis of
harmonic proportions (and not by simple calculation of resistance of materials),
it is oriented (with the apse invariably towards the East) and contains manifold
astronomical elements, real and symbolic, expressed through the Christian
doctrine, that was not alien to the cultural climate of the medieval epoch.
In the Middle Ages it is possible to be said that everything comes from
East, with the Arabs or the crossed as messengers;
they brought Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra, Trigonometry, Alchemy,
hippocratic Medicine and numerous Greek works, translated to the Arab. Plato,
Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy and so many other authors, that they had lost for
Meanwhile, it was not a secret in Europe that in their retirement [
with the Reconquest ] the Muslims had left in Christian hands so many
books, books that Europeans
of the North of the Pyrenees - it does not seem that Spanish clergymen thought
the same, they preferred to fight instead of read- wished to learn and study.
For that reason, an important number traveled to Christian Spain (not to the
Muslim, where there were still
better libraries), they learnt Arab and was able to translate the books that the
bishops lent them, who had confiscated them of the libraries of the defeated. (16)
An important element of the transmission was the place value notation in
numbers (that we still use at the moment), in which the value of a number
depends of the position that occupies (units, tens, hundreds, etc.); neither the
Romans nor the Greeks knew it, in spite of coming from the
This system is essential to make calculations, to develop equations and,
in general, all Mathematics applied. Christian scientific knowledge, compared
with the Arab, was certainly incipient, which can be verified comparing works of
both fields written simultaneously; the Tractat d'astronomia of Ramon Llull, or Nova Geometria, of
the same author, is of inferior quality than other similar contemporary works of
the Arab world.
In the middle of a cultural and social explosion which they made of
Cordova the capital of the world in its time, Astrology was one of sciences in
which they honoured the Muslim wise people; but that science of stars basically
came from the hand of Ptolemy and few more authors, that is to say, it was
translated Greek science, that is, Chaldea, to which without a doubt they made
some contribution. Tetrabiblos and
Almagesto (Syntaxis Megalé or
Gran Composition) were the
more advanced of the astronomical science (and astrological) of those moments;
Alfonso X, king of Castile, dedicated a great part of his efforts to
translate to the Castilian and Latin the
Muslim astrology in century XIII. Under
his supervision was made among other works, the
Libro Conplido en los iudizios de las
estrellas [Complete Book in
the judgements of the stars], of Aly Ben Ragel, a compendium of
medieval astrology. The original manuscript is in the National Library of
Madrid. In 1954 Gerold Hilty, a
North American scholar, published the transliteration; in 1997 were published
two adaptations to a modern Castilian. In 2004 it was being translated to the
Russian, one of the few important European languages to which this work had not
been known. So, the astrological
revival seems to be in a good moment at moment.
An important element of Libro Conplido is
that it speaks clearly about discrepancies in the astrological doctrine from
Greek authors, that is, in Hellenistic epoch the science of stellar influence
already had entered into decay; it dedicates to this subject a section of the
fifth Chapter of Book I, Aphorisms in discords of the ancient wises. Ben Ragel mentions Ptolemy, Dorocius (Dorothy of Sidon),
Vuelius (Vetius Valens of the Latins) and Hermes, to which he adds others of his
cultural surroundings (Messeallah, Atebary and Abnelfarhan).
It interests to us to stand out here that, under the apparent splendour
of medieval Muslim science, the precariousness of the observations and
astronomical calculations becomes now quite evident, and this for two reasons:
first, the lack of an suitable mathematical apparatus (to deal with
waves, that is, vectorial calculation, harmonic analysis, complex numbers,
etc.), and second, the deficiency of instrumental precision (the telescope did
not appear until the Renaissance, in century XVI).
The failures in astrological predictions were generally attributed to
these defects of the calculations, not to failures of the doctrine (except for
some exception, as the jew Maimonides, that criticized the divinatory astrology
from its deep knowledge of astrological doctrines).
These failures had a positive effect in the stimulation of the advances,
as much astronomical as mathematical.
We can imagine the difficulty and cumbersome of the calculations for
casting an horoscope in the Middle Age; to obtain the position of a planet with
the Alfonsies Tables required half an hour of work for an experienced computer,
and to cast an complete horoscope about four hours (17)
In
many cases astrologers were satisfied calculating the average positions of
planets by means of simple rules, not the true positions;
in other words, it was sufficient to determine the sign where the planet
was.
The use of both fixed Zodiac (virtual) and the stellar simultaneously as
reference also contributed to commit errors and confusions; in fact, there were
in use two systems that, for example, when determining the entrance of the Sun
in the signs (and therefore of the astronomical stations), implied discrepancies
of about six days in century XI (theory of the observation and the Sindhindi,
this was brought by the Arab astronomers of India).
The lack of precision in the determination of solstices and equinoxes
(or, which is the same, the insecurity in the calculation of the beginning of
the astronomical quadrants of the year) suggested the use of the great Christian
religious buildings as astronomical observatories (meridian lines).
The procedure consisted of opening a small hole in a wall oriented to the
South, and to observe the luminous spot on the pavement at the moment for
passing the Sun through the
If this happened to such astronomical elements in the Christian temples,
the advances of Astronomy had the exclusive object of avoid errors in
astrological predictions, attributed as we said to deficiencies in the
calculated position of the planets. The
effort of the equipment reunited by Alfonso X the Wise crystallized in the
preparation of the so called Alfonsies
Tables, already mentioned, and very used in all
During century XIII already was knew that astronomy of Ptolemy took to
discrepancies between predictions and the observation, but almost nobody
questioned the model, consisting of a fixed Earth and the planetary orbs turning
around to it in a complicated system of deferential eccentrics and equants. The
astronomical model was tie closely to religious elements from the Antiquity; in
this system it was considered that mortal creatures inhabited the Earth, the
Gods and the souls of righteous the
Astronomy went on its advance unstoppable, and in century XV, the
increase of the commerce and navigation added a new incentive to perfect the
tables and the observations of stars; it was the dawn of the Renaissance.
With the arrival of the press a true literary explosion began
(interchanges of intellectual type), and few years later Europe discovered the
Astronomy advanced, but not Astrology, stagnated in no other activities
that the repetition and copy of old works; the lack of new observations of the
influence of the stars, and of new theories, the model of the planetary spheres,
the Principle of basic uniqueness
of the nature, the harmony and tuning between Sky and Earth as basic postulates
of ancient science, went fossilizing in old, invariable and obsolete dogmas.
Even it continued present in the society some more centuries, until
disappearing almost completely of the scientific panorama between XVII and XVIII
centuries.
The Renaissance declivity
During centuries XVI and XVII the European way of life underwent an
authentic revolution in all the orders. We
are going to be centered here in some particular and little known aspects of the
declivity of the ancient concepts, also denying certain current errors that
still circulate without no objective foundation.
The fall of the ancient science (and with it of the Astrology) usually is
attributed to the combined effort of certain authors, basically Nicholas
Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.
We cannot enter into the consideration of these authors from the point of
view of our own time, ignoring the moment that they lived, if we want to
approach to the true way to think and to focus the things correctly.
It is certain that the four mentioned, and others of the same epoch, gave
a crank blow that changed radically the way to see the world, but that was not
absolutely their intention, nor worked with that objective.
The History of Science has not clarified the last motivations that
incline to Copernicus to propose a model of the world with the Sun in the center
and the Earth turning around it; we
can say that it knew the astrological system, as any cultured man of his time,
and that, in spite of defying a worldwide vision that was effective fourteen
centuries ago, its new model continued being compound of planetary spheres, not
of simple planets orbiting around the Sun, as it is conceived at present time.
This detail, fundamental for us, is systematically ignored by the
critical of Astrology.
They affirm that Galileo Galilei was a detractor of astrological system,
when the certain thing is he knew its techniques; but he had bad luck when
predicting long life to his protector the great Duke of Toscana, Fernando I of Médicis
the 16 of January of 1609 (been born in 1549), that died few weeks later (19)
The
bitter character of Galileo took him to a visceral opposition front the beliefs
of the astrologers. But still was more radical his intransigence with the
scholastics, that is to say, the orthodox scientists of his epoch.
Galileo was extremely revolutionary in undertake the study of natural
phenomena since we do today, by means of application of mathematical calculation
and experimentation.
The works of Aristotle were known again in
In De caelo, Aristotle
settles down a radical division between the terrestrial and the celestial world; for him, terrestrial or the inferior world is constituted by
four Elements (Earth, Water, Air and Fire), passive and subject to the
circulation of the seven orbs (planetary spheres) with its seven wanderer stars,
plus the eighth of fixed stars, that are active and determine the terrestrial
events. The sky is made of a fifth
Element or Quintessence. For
Aristotle the spheres constitute " separated intelligences " (they
follow an perfect order) that, in version of the three great monotheists
religions they are " angels " or mediators between the divine will and
the humans who live in the Earth.
We can see this cosmology repeated in most of medieval texts with slight
variants and also has strong religious connotations; for the astral religions of
the Antiquity the souls of men are of celestial nature, from the heavens come to
incarnate in a terrestrial body, and from the Earth start off with the death.
The Earth constitutes a crossing site and everything what there is in it
is born to die (he is subject to generation and corruption); the Christianity
will locate the saints beyond stars, and, presiding everything, Christ
Pantocrator.
Within this cosmology, in agreement with Plato and other authors, the
planets, the Sun and the Moon, are Gods (creative and governing agents of the
inferior world); its bodies, perfectly round; the movements, perfectly circular
and uniform. The sky, with all divine thing that contains, is eternal and
immutable, no change can happened in it, neither generation nor corruption.
On the other hand, in the Earth the bodies move in straight line (they
fall following the vertical), looking for " their natural place ".
To more weight, they descend with greater speed (Aristotle); of course,
the Earth remains immovable, as " precipitated " and passive subject
of the upper world.
Galileo developed a new Kinematics, applying equations to the movement of
the bodies, as young people studies in High School; in the famous
The immutable skies of aristotelian cosmology presented variability, and
the Gods, some imperfections! Even
the Jupiter moons broke the scheme of " esoteric number seven ", the
great dogma of ancient old-fashioned science, already in unstoppable declivity:
There is seven windows in the face, two windows in the nose, two ears,
two eyes and one mouth; thus in
skies there are two favourable stars, two nonpropitious ones, two lights, and a
single, and indecided indifferent Mercury.
From which and other many phenomena similar of the nature like the seven
metals, etc., that would be tedious to enumerate, we arrive to the conclusion
the number of planets necessarily has to be seven... In addition, the Jews and other ancient nations, and also the
modern Europeans, have adopted the division of the week in seven days that call
them by the names of seven planets; however, if we enumerate the number of
planets, this system falls by its base... In
addition, the satellites [of Jupiter] are invisible for the naked-eye and
therefore they cannot have influence on the Earth, so do not exist (20)
We see the degree of simpleness and pride that can reach the human mind
when is put it in hardships. Galileo devoted a combative work to the defence of
the heliocentric model of Copernicus and to his own ideas in Physics and
Astronomy (Dialogue on both maximum
systems of the ptolemaic and copernican world). (21)
His determined defence of this ideas took it to the sentence
of the Roman Church. He retracted of them in June 22 of 1633;
previously, De revolutionibus of Copernicus had been condemned
March 3 of 1616.
Our next personage, Kepler, is another of the creators of the foundations
of modern Physics, in spite to be a convinced and practitioner astrologer, with
an evident Pythagorean and mystical inclination;
in order to verify this it is enough to read his works, that are
continued publishing with certain regularity, which has not been obstacle so
that some critical have had daring to affirm frivolously that it condemned
Astrology and that, if he made horoscopes and published annual meteorological
predictions being based on the planetary events and aspects, it was due to
economic necessities.
The certain thing is that Kepler was the last great European investigator
in astrological matter, one of the few people that in XVI-XVII centuries
investigated and made science on the influence of the stars in the Earth and its
inhabitants; at present several astrological software and some publishing house
dedicated to ancient science take their name.
Kepler contributed to the failure of the dogmas dragged by the scholastic
with the three physical laws that take their name (and, by the way, our
bachelors continue studying); the fine astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe
(Kepler collaborated with him), and that took to their discovery.
The first and the second laws were demolishing for the aristotelian
Physics: the orbits of planets are
not circular, but elliptical, (although of low eccentricity) and the Sun
occupies one of the two centers, contradicting so much the position and Earth
fixedness as the fact that the Gods, only can draw up perfect circles (Eudoxus,
Aristotle, Plato, etc.). The second law
affirms that the planets do not travel at constant speed, but that accelerates
in the perihelion (minimum of distance to the Sun) and they go slower in the
aphelion (maximum distance).
As we see, neither the first law nor the second contradicts the basic
principles of ancient science, but certain way to go into the problem to
determine the movement of the stars by mathematical calculation. They do not
refuse the planetary influence either, one of the subjects that Kepler dealt in
his works (Mysterium Cosmographicum [
The secret of the universe ], Harmonices mundi [
The harmonics in the world ], De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus [ On the very certain foundations of the astrology ]).
Some years after Kepler worked in the present
Newton’s conceptions were demolishing for the aristotelian Physics and
Cosmology, that already had began to show deficiencies and errors, mainly in
Cosmology (Law of Universal Gravitation): only one equation describe both the
free fall of a body in the proximities of the terrestrial surface and the
movement of the Moon, breaking the dogma which affirms the laws of the
terrestrial world nothing have to do with those of the celestial one.
It would seem therefore that
... the main object of Natural Philosophy is to infer from the
phenomena, without preconceived hypotheses, and to deduce the causes of the
effects, until arriving at the First Cause, that certainly is not mechanical;
and this not by desir to
separate the world of the mechanics, but to solve mainly these and analogous
questions. What is in the almost
empty places of the matter, and where comes that the Sun and the planets
gravitate to each other, without dense matter among them?
From where that the Nature does not do anything in vain?
And from where it arises the order and beauty that we see in the world?
Which is the aim of comets and why the planets in the same way move all
of them according to concentric orbits, whereas the comets do it according to a
great variety of orbits of great eccentricity?
And what prevents to fixed stars to fall on others?
From where it comes that the bodies of the animals are comprised with
such an art and such aim their different parts?
Was formed the eye without ability for the optics and the ear without
knowledge of the sound? How come
the movements from the body of the will and where comes the instinct to the
animals? Is not sensitivity that
place in which is the sensitive substance in the animals and to which transmit
the sensible species of the things by means of the nerves and the brain to be
perceived by its immediate presence before the substance?
And being all these things so straight established, it does not appear
clear by the phenomena, the existence of an incorporeal, Living, Intelligent
Being, Omnipotent, that, in the infinite space, as if it was his sensitivity
there, sees the intimate of the things, he totally perceives them and
understands by his immediate presence before Him, and only the images of the
things transmitted by the organ of the sense to our small sensitivity are seen
and perceived by what about us he thinks and perceives?
And it also does not keep all step to us in this philosophy to the
immediate knowledge of the First Cause and more near of it, and for that reason
we has to have it in great esteem? (22)
In a letter written in 1692,
When I wrote my treaty [ Principia, 1687 ] about our system, I had the
intention of which the exposed principles took to men to the consideration of
the faith in a Divinity; and
nothing has cheered to me more than to know them useful for my intention (23)
Our way to see the world from the present thought distorts the real
vision of the discoverer of the Law of Gravitation, that, convinced Christian,
in the final escolio of Principia says:
The six main planets turn around the Sun in concentric circles to the
Sun, with the same direction of movement and approximately in the same plane... And all those regular movements do not have an origin due to
mechanical causes... So elegant
combination of the Sun, planets and comets only could have origin in the
intelligence and power of an intelligent and powerful being...
It [ the Sun ] governs everything, not as soul of the world, but the
owner of all. And by its dominion,
he usually is called Lord Pantocrator (24) ..
At the end of his Opticks Newton
reaffirms himself in this idea admitting that the perturbations produced in the
planetary orbits by the mutual attractions of planets would finish, without the
vigilant control of the
The position of the Church
As much the Christian Churches, as the Judaism and the islamism, have
maintained difficult relations with the cultivators of the science of the
influence of the stars, because to foretell human fate put in question the
divine will as much as the freedom of election in the humans.
In any time and place there are subjects for which things only can be
white or black, when the reality is much more varied and colourful; Ptolemy, the
great authority of Western Astrology, already cleared the problem when seating
that " the stars incline, but do not force ".
Enrique de Villena, in his Treaty of Astrology (1428)
says to us that:
... Astrology parts in two parts, that is to say, one that deals with
the movement of all the heavens, judging the weathers before it come. About this
there is no doubt. The other deals
with elections, and this is subtle
and bad of have. And of this is
opinion if we can use it without sin or non;
and of this are known the epidemics, births of men and illnesses, wars
and deaths of the kings, and other many things, trough the science explains.
This is reproved some doctors of the
In the Book of Good Love [Libro
del buen amor] the
Arcipreste de Hita also gives his opinion on the matter:
I believe the astrologers naturally true;
but God, that made nature and accident,
He can alter it and to make
other way:
according the catholic faith in this I am believer. (27)
This ambience of relative tolerance was broken at the epoch of Council of
Trento. Peculiarly, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium of Copernicus, published in 1543, it was dedicated to Paulo
III, the Pope that, after several attempts, could finally summon the Council
in 1545. During 1559 Paulo
IV created the Prohibited Book
Index, and in 1563 were established the rules to evaluate what texts
could enter in it.
We have spoken of multiple astronomical constructive details in the
Christian temples, even of astrological cosmology; the God Janus is present in
some cathedrals, as much the signs of the Zodiac, the planetary spheres,
representations of synodic cycles, etc. The Council of Trento specifically
prohibited any reference alien to the most orthodox Christianity in sculptures,
pictures and texts. So, united to the astrological declivity of centuries XVI
and XVII, with the increase of the new scientific paradigm and the new trends of
the Holly Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church (and the Reformed one of Lutero
played a similar role) came to finish off the science of stellar influences.
A document of the Inquisition dated in 1584, Opinion
onAstrology and ninth rule of the catalogue [Parecer de
His Grace and Most Reverend Sir:
With this Rule 9 that Holy Office has established with
communication of some scholars on the communication apparently disordered of the
Astrology, I say that whatever the cause is pious more and the reasons
apparently are more urgent as much would be their more harmful prohibition and
of greater disadvantages than I fear would be increased (although only the
scholars very experienced in Astrology can warn, although they are not enough
learned well and without experience of the several things that always are
offered in long speeches) and thus is necessary precedes in it the consideration
that requests the quality of the matter, because of where it is only tried to
guess right in the remedy of some abuses (that
I deny) could be greater and more irreparable those than were increased
again, that those that is desired to avoid...
We
permit the treated books and written
that teaches to us by the births and their directions, revolutions, profetcions
and transits of the planets, to know the corporal inclinations, conditions,
qualities and diseases of men and
the accidents and effects that in them natural and physically by the movements
of the heavens are accused, mean
and understand, by the speeches of the several commissions of planets and their
aspects and movements.
Also are allowed the books treated and written necessary for the
knowledge of the times and general events of the world, as for elections and
natural observations that according to the heavens and stars and their several
movements have respect correspondence and harmony with the births and
revolutions, births as of the world considering that everything what thus by
good and lyric Astrology it is allowed, can be and not to be and that only is
come in it with fallible conjectures.
In the same way are allowed the judgments and natural observations that
are necessary to Medicine,
Agriculture, Constructions and Navigations. (28)
This ambience of relative permissiveness finished just one year later,
when Pope Sixto V, in 1585, promulgated his Coeli et Terrae, in which prohibited " all the arts that deals the future
events, with the exception of which by natural causes necessarily or frequently
they are followed ". From
then, according to the Roman Church, Astrology will be allowed whenever is
applied to Medicine, Agriculture and Navigation, but will fall in crime "
the astrologers that with vain superstition by observance of the day of birth or
another one, presume and affirm the state, condition, duration of life, honours,
wealth, succession, health, death, ways, fights, enmities, jails, several crimes
and other cases of prosperous and adverse the humans, attributing to the stars
which is born of the free will of them, having to know that the stars became by
the man and not the man by the stars”.
It was specifically prohibited therefore the Judicial Astrology; the
Inquisition published its Proclamations of
Faith against the practitioners until the end of century XIX.
The border between allowed and the prohibited thing it was always
difficult to determine; under
protection of their almanacs and medical practices, the astrologers filtered
some predictions, but already the general atmosphere was for them more and more
hostile. And astrologers no longer
were in conditions for the regeneration of a science they ignored its physical
bases, because the new emergent science hit frontally the old postulates (it
separates the man of the Cosmos, the part of the whole, is analytical and
reduccionist, exclusively rational and progressively positivist and
materialistic).
The rationalism and the burial of Astrology
We have seen that who drew up the foundations of modern science did not
proposed at all to ruin the basic principles of the ancient knowledge; but life
is movement, change and transformation, and, as Aristotle sentenced, in this
lower world everything is subject to generation and corruption, to the birth and
the death. Or, still better,
according to ancient Middle Eastern science, everything is subject to cycles,
appears, reaches to its maximum splendour, declines and disappears, then
reappear some time later, as the Sun and the stars every day, every night, every
year, each simple or composed cycle.
The last Spanish astrologer of fame was Don Diego de Torres Villarroel,
who had the chair of Mathematics at the
When the thousands you will count
Cuando los mil contarás
with three hundred dubbings,
con los trescientos doblados,
and fifty duplicates
y
cincuenta duplicados
with
nine tens more,
con
los nueve dieces más,
then,
you will see it,
entonces, tú lo verás,
miserable
your last calamity
tu calamidad postrera
with your king and your dolphin,
con tu rey y tu delfín,
and it will have then his end
y tendrá entonces su fin
your greater first glory.
tu mayor Gloria primera.
De Torres was involved in bitter controversies with Benito Jerónimo Feijóo,
a declared enemy of all thing related with noncatholic superstitious beliefs,
and, of course, with Astrology. The
same opinion maintained Doctor Martín Martinez, author of a Final
Judgment of Astrology in defence of Universal
Critical Theatre divided in three speeches. Speech first: Astrology
is vain and ridiculous in the Natural thing.
Speech second: Astrology is false and dangerous in the Moral.
Speech third: Astrology is useless and harmful in the politic (1726).
The answer of Torres, a satirical and quevedian author, few and far
between, consisted of his Burial of final Judgment and vivification of
Astrology, hurt with three sores to natural, moral and political, and cured with
three patches: Astrology is good and certain in natural, true and
safe in the moral, useful and beneficial in politics (Seville, 1727). It
arrived times of jokes, and the emergent side did not remain short in them. We
have another example in The
very small Piscator by the sky and the others by earth.
Journey
dreamed between roosters and midnight, in which Astrology is undertaken, and
simultaneously is made the Astrologers see the Stars (Antonio
Ángel de Fravega,
But everything evolved against Torres and other practitioners, who, as
much theologians, clung to the intellectual forms of Aristotle; it seems
pathetic nowadays their rebuttals, plenum of the burlesque acidity that
characterized them, when refused a consequence of the Newtonian Mechanics, that
the Earth, due to its turn, cannot be a perfect sphere, but
must be flattened by the Poles. The
arguments against
Lacks of intellectual sap necessary to reanimate the dying, both
astrologers and theologians were fortified in their old obsolete dogmas, devoted
to the authority of the " ancients " and religious " revelation
". Outside, the winds of
rationalism and positivism blew with uncontrollable force;
the
The vigorous development of Mechanics initiated by
Science definitively became independent (and for the first time in
History) from the religion, giving birth to a totally materialistic teaching (we
already saw that Astronomy, Magic and Religion were born together, and how
Newton when speaking of these subjects expressed itself, so different from which
would come later). In this
climate of disrepute by the ancient conceptions, chemists believed to have
destroyed the vitalistics doctrines (which assured that the alive beings had
something beyond the matter that maintained and ordered its characteristic
functions) when in 1826 Hennell obtained a synthetic ethanol preparation and in
1828 Wöhler did the same with the urea, starting off of acid hydrocyanic and
ammoniac. In fact, such syntheses
and those that came later, only demonstrated the incipient condition was still
Chemistry in century XIX if we compared it with the present time.
" Organic Chemistry " (thus called, because it thought that
only the alive beings could synthesize this type of compounds of their
metabolism) is now more suitably denominated " Carbon Chemistry ".
But that was not all. New planets in the Solar System were discovered;
Uranus (1781), Neptune (1846) and Pluto (1930).
At this point, the dogmas of the septenary, the planetary spheres and
horoscopes, no longer nobody remembered in the University.
Astrology did not teach anymore in
The new vision of the world, analytical and reduccionist, has allowed to
incredible advances centuries back in the knowledge of the nature. But, as
everything subject cycles, as time has passed by, also has left glimpse the
first fissures, the first weak points. When
the scientific building seemed to be finished definitively, in the hinge of
centuries XIX-XX, when the human thought penetrated for the first time in the
microscopic world of atoms, everything came down (Planck, 1900, Einstein, 1905,
de Broglie, 1920, Heisemberg, 1927, etc.).
A few decades later it could be stated that, again, the doors were open
for the ancient way to contemplate the universe.
And, simultaneously, came up again a noticeable astrological movement all
along Western world. That is for we expect another revolution in the world of
macrocospics.
Notes
1. - See for example the
opinion of the historian David Romano in Science hispanojew or the Tractat d'astronomia of Ramon Llull, dedicated completely to astrological
questions.
2. - Recent edition of this
work exists. Moseh Ben Maimon. Maimónides. On
the Messiah. Letter to the Jews of
3. - Also this work at the
present time can be ***reflxed mng (Castilian edition in the classic ones of
Gredos Editorial).
4.
- Demetrio Santos. Altamira: Paleolithic
astrology. XXI
Iberian
Congress of Astrology.
5. W.
L.s go to der Waerden. The
tablets of Ammisaduka Magazine
BEROSO nº 7.
6. - Jose Mª Millàs
Vallicrosa. Studies on history
of Spanish science. Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
7. - Idem builds previous, pág.
3.
8. - Millás contributes in
the work already mentioned all a series of texts and written on the subject,
notices 6, pág. 5.
9. - Demetrio Santos Astrological
dating: horóscopo of 2/05/1115 a.C. Beroso
Magazine nº 7. Barcelona, 2002.
10. -
Spanish translation in magazine BEROSO exists nº 1, Barcelona 2000.
11. - Demetrio Santos
12. - Vitrubio.
Architecture Book
II, 2.
13. - Introduction to the
Tetrabible de Claudius Ptolemy. Demetrio
Santos. Barath Editorial.
Madrid, 1980.
14. - Mentioned by Juan
Vernet. History of Spanish
science Institute of
15. - Auguste Bouchê-Leclercq.
L'astrologie grecque Réimpression
of l'edition of Paris 1899. Scienctia
Verlag
16. - Juan Vernet. The Islam in
17. - According to Julio
Samsó in the Introduction to the Treaty
of Astrology attributed
to Enrique de Villena. Editorial
Humanitas, Barcelona, 1983. Pág.
45.
18. - Juan Vernet.
Astrology and astronomy in the Renaissance Acantilado.
19. - Ídem builds previous,
pág. 19.
20. - According to Francesco
Sizi, florentino astronomer. Mentioned
in Foundations of the Modern
Physics. Gerald
Holton and H.D. Roller. Editorial
Reverté, S.A.
21. - Recent Spanish version
of Alianza Editorial exists.
22. - Isaac Newton. Opticks, 2ª
English edition, 1717. Mentioned in
Foundations of the Modern Physics. Gerald Holton and H.D. Roller, pág.
257.
23. - Ídem builds previous,
pág. 258.
24. - Isaac Newton. Mathematical principles of the natural philosophy, volume
2.
25. - Desiderio Papp. The problem of the origin of worlds
26. - Treaty of Astrology
attributed to Enrique de
Villena. Editorial Humanitas, Barcelona, 1983.
Pág.
117. Fols.
6 r-6 v.
27. - Estrofa
140.
28. Shrine Muñoz Calvo.
Inquisición and Ciencia in
modern Spain Editora
Nacional.
29. - Torres Villarroel. Commentary to the observations of Jorge Juan and Antonio
de Ulloa In Of the
Alchemy to the Panteismo. Marginalized
Spanish of centuries XVIII and XIX Editora
Nacional.
30. - Juan Vernet. Astrology and astronomy in the Renaissance. Acantilado.
Recommended readings
Introduction to the history of the Astrology Demetrio
Santos Santos.
Although it is to make a true History of the science of stars in depth,
this introduction supposes an enormous effort and the worthiest work and
completes that he has been written until now in the world, reason why no student
or interested in the subject can ignore it.
Studies on history of Spanish science.
Jose Mª Millàs
Vallicrosa. Cosejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas.
History of Spanish science Juan
Vernet Ginés. Faccsímil of the
edition made by the
Texts and studies on Spanish astronomy in century XIII.
Published by Juan
Vernet. Faculty of Philosophy and
letters. Universidad Autónoma de
Barcelona.
New studies on Spanish astronomy in the century of Alfonso X. Editados by Juan Vernet.
Hispanojew Science David
Romano. Mapfre Editorial.
The Islam in
Astrology and astronomy in the Renaissance. Juan
Vernet. Acantilado.
Barcelona,
2000.
L'astrologie grecque. Auguste Bouché-Leclercq.
Reimpresión
of the edition of
The rumor of stars. Theory
and experience of Greek astronomy Eulalia
Perez Sede6no. Siglo
XXI de España de Editores, S.A. Madrid, 1986.
Phenomena.
Arato
Introduction to the phenomena Gémino.
Introduction, translations and notes of Esteban Calderón Dorda.
Gredos Editorial.
Astronomy and Astrology of the origins to the Renaissance. Published by Aurelio Perez Jiménez. Ediciones Clásicas, S.A. Madrid, 1992. www.chartaantiqua-es.net
BEROSO.
Magazine
of investigation and historical reflection on cosmological questions Director:
Jose Fernandez Quintano http://www.beroso.info
Interesting articles and translations to Spanish language of very
remarkable international authors (Otto Neugebauer, Abraham Sanchs, B.L. go to
der Waerden, Asger Aaboe, etc.).
The celestial scrittura The
nascita dell'astrologia in
Skywatchers in old
Empires of Time. Calendars,
Clocks and Cultures Anthony Aveni. Revised
edition. University Press of
The two previous works contain pleasant and most interesting works on
arqueoastronomy and chronology through the observation of stars and planets;
only the systematic observation of the by rough estimate naked sky,
without aid of instruments, could make be born in the conscience of the man the
sensation of the stars influence to us.
The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy James Evans.
Most interesting page Web with all article class on Astrology, among them
of History (remarkable Giuseppe Bezza and other authors).
Directed by Giuseppe Bezza; History
of the Astrology, old text translations.
The laws of the sky. Old
astronomy and civilizations Juan
Antonio Belmonte. Editions Subjects
of
The sky of the magicians. Astronomical
and Meteorological time in the Traditional Culture of the Canary Peasantry Juan
Antonio Belmonte Avilés and Margarita Sanz de Lara Districts.
Marea.
Juan Antonio Belmonte is astrophisician and he gives a most interesting
vision us, mainly honest, documented and exact, on the astronomical implications
of the archaeological rest, folkloric, etc.
Finally, as a counterpoint, we as much have an example of how an
investigation does not have to be undertaken, from the scientific point of view
like of the most elementary ethics. The
reader will be able to judge by itself:
Astrology. Science
or belief? Manuel
Toharia. Mc Graw- Hill.