Posted on May 30, 2022

The original purpose of astrology, on the other hand, was to inform the individual of the course of his life on the basis of the positions of the planets and of the zodiacal signs (the 12 astrological constellations) at the moment of his birth or conception. From this science, called genethlialogy (casting nativities), were developed the fundamental techniques of astrology. The main subdivisions of astrology that developed after genethlialogy are general, cathartic, and interrogatory.

General astrology studies the relationship of the significant celestial moments (e.g., the times of vernal equinoxes, eclipses, or planetary conjunctions) to social groups, nations, or all of humanity. It answers, by astrological means, questions formerly posed in Mesopotamia to the bāru.

Catarchic (pertaining to beginnings or sources) astrology determines whether or not a chosen moment is astrologically conducive to the success of a course of action begun in it. Basically in conflict with a rigorous interpretation of genethlialogy, it allows the individual (or corporate body) to act at astrologically favourable times and, thereby, to escape any failures predictable from his (or its) nativity.

Interrogatory astrology provides answers to a client’s queries based on the situation of the heavens at the moment of his posing the questions. This astrological consulting service is even more remote from determinism than is catarchic astrology; it is thereby closer to divination by omens and insists upon the ritual purification and preparation of the astrologer.

Other forms of astrology, such as iatromathematics (application of astrology to medicine) and military astrology, are variants on one or another of the above.

Astral omens in the ancient Middle East

The astral omens employed in Mesopotamian divination were later commingled with what came to be known as astrology in the strict sense of the term and constituted within astrology a branch described as natural astrology. Though lunar eclipses apparently were regarded as ominous at a somewhat earlier period, the period of the 1st dynasty of Babylon (18th to 16th centuries BC) was the time when the cuneiform text Enūma Anu Enlil, devoted to celestial omina, was initiated. The final collection and codification of this series, however, was not accomplished before the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. But the tablets that have survived—mainly from the Assyrian library of King Ashurbanipal (7th century BC)—indicate that a standard version never existed. Each copy had its own characteristic contents and organization designed to facilitate its owner’s consultation of the omens.

The common categories into which the omens of Enūma Anu Enlil were considered to fall were four, named after the chief gods involved in the ominous communication: Sin, Shamash, Adad, and Ishtar. Sin (the Moon) contains omens involving such lunar phenomena as first crescents, eclipses, halos, and conjunctions with various fixed stars; Shamash (the Sun) deals with omens involving such solar phenomena as eclipses, simultaneous observations of two suns, and perihelia (additional suns); Adad (the weather god) is concerned with omens involving meteorological phenomena, such as thunder, lightning, and cloud formations, as well as earthquakes; and Ishtar (Venus) contains omens involving planetary phenomena such as first and last visibilities, stations (the points at which the planets appear to stand still), acronychal risings (rising of the planet in the east when the Sun sets in the west), and conjunctions with the fixed stars.

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Though these omens are often cited in the reports of a network of observers established throughout the Assyrian empire in the 7th century BC, they seem to have lost their popularity late in the period of the Persian domination of Mesopotamia (ending in the 4th century BC). During the later period new efforts were made, in a large number of works called Diaries, to find the correct correlations between celestial phenomena and terrestrial events. Before this development, however, portions of the older omen series were transmitted to Egypt, Greece, and India as a direct result of Achaemenid domination (the Achaemenian dynasty ruled in Persia from 559 to 330 BC) of these cultural areas or of their border regions.

Astral omens in Egypt, Greece, India, and China

The evidence for a transmission of lunar omens to Egypt in the Achaemenian period lies primarily in a demotic papyrus based on an original of about 500 BC. A more extensive use of Mesopotamian celestial omens is attested by the fragments of a book written in Greek in the 2nd century BC and claimed as a work addressed to a King Nechepso by the priest Petosiris. From this source, among others, the contents of Enūma Anu Enlil were included in the second book of the Apotelesmatika, or “Work on Astrology” (commonly called the Tetrabiblos, or “Four Books”), by Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer of the 2nd century AD; the first book of an astrological compendium, by Hephaestion of Thebes, a Greco-Egyptian astrologer of the 5th century AD; and the On Signs of John Lydus, a Byzantine bureaucrat of the 6th century. Yet another channel of transmission to the Greeks was through the Magusaeans of Asia Minor, a group of Iranian settlers influenced by Babylonian ideas. Their teachings are preserved in several Classical works on natural history, primarily that of Pliny the Elder (c. AD 23–79), and the Geoponica (a late collection of agricultural lore).

In various Middle Eastern languages there also exist many texts dealing with celestial omens, though their sources and the question as to whether they are directly descended from a Mesopotamian tradition or are derived from Greek or Indian intermediaries is yet to be investigated. Of these texts the most important are those ascribed to Hermes Trismegistos by the Harranians and now preserved in Arabic, the Book of the Zodiac of the Mandaeans (a Gnostic sect still existing in Iraq and Khuzistan), the Apocalypse, attributed to the biblical prophet Daniel (extant in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic versions), and The Book of the Bee in Syriac.

The transmission of Mesopotamian omen literature to India, including the material in Enūma Anu Enlil, apparently took place in the 5th century BC during the Achaemenid occupation of the Indus valley. The first traces are found in Buddhist texts of this period, and Buddhist missionaries were instrumental in carrying this material to Central Asia, China, Tibet, Japan, and Southeast Asia. But the most important of the works of this Indian tradition and the oldest extant one in Sanskrit is the earliest version of the as-yet-unpublished Gargasamhita (“Compositions of Garga”) of about the 1st century AD. The original Mesopotamian material was modified so as to fit into the Indian conception of society, including the system of the four castes and the duty of the upper castes to perform the samskaras (sanctifying ceremonies).

There are numerous later compilations of omens in Sanskrit—of which the most notable are the Brhatsamhita, or “Great Composition,” of Varahamihira (c. 550), the Jain Bhadrabahu-samhita, or “Composition of Bhadrabahu” (c. 10th century), and the Parishishtas (“Supplements”) of the Atharvaveda (perhaps 10th or 11th century)—though these add little to the tradition. But in the works of the 13th century and later, entitled Tājika, there is a massive infusion of the Arabic adaptations of the originally Mesopotamian celestial omens as transmitted through Persian (Tājika) translations. In Tājika the omens are closely connected with general astrology; in the earlier Sanskrit texts their connections with astrology had been primarily in the fields of military and catarchic astrology.

Astrology in the Hellenistic period (3rd century BC to 3rd century AD)

In the 3rd century BC and perhaps somewhat earlier, Babylonian diviners began—for the purpose of predicting the course of an individual’s life—to utilize some planetary omens: positions relative to the horizon, latitudes, retrogressions, and other positions at the moment of birth or of computed conception. This method was still far from astrology, but its evolution was more or less contemporary and parallel with the development of the science of genethlialogy in Hellenistic Egypt.

Equally obscure are those individuals who, living in Egypt under the Ptolemies (a Greek dynasty ruling 305–30 BC), mathematicized the concept of a correspondence between the macrocosm (“larger order,” or universe) and the microcosm (“smaller order,” or man) as interpreted in terms of Platonic or Aristotelian theories concerning the Earth as the centre of the planetary system. They conceived of the ecliptic (the apparent orbital circle of the Sun) as being divided into 12 equal parts, or zodiacal signs, each of which consists of 30°; in this they followed the Babylonians. They further regarded each of these 12 signs as the domicile (or house) of a planet and subdivided each into various parts—decans of 10° each, fines (“bounds”) of varying lengths, and dōdecatēmoria of 2°30′ each—each of which is also dominated by a planet. Scattered at various points throughout the ecliptic are the planets’ degrees of exaltation (high influence), opposite to which are their degrees of dejection (low influence). Various arcs of the zodiac, then, are either primarily or secondarily subject to each planet, whose strength and influence in a geniture (nativity) depend partially on its position relative to these arcs and to those of its friends and enemies.

Original Post: https://www.britannica.com/topic/astrology/Purposes-of-astrology

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