Fundamentals of Astrology

Byzantine period zodiac from the Beit Alpha synagogue

Ancient science
Astrology is probably among the earliest human sciences before the beginning of the modern scientific and technological revolution. It consists of observation, recording of the observations, various explanations of the phenomena and providing theories about the significance of the observations.

The Celestial clockwork with its accurately repeating events is the factual world that is being studied. We have ancient records of the movements of heavenly objects and their significance to man in the cuneiform texts in the clay tables of Sippora from Babylon. The books of Ptolemy represent the absolute height of the Science of Astrology and dominated human conception about the movements of the heavens above us for over a thousand years. For example the medieval Christian church found it very difficult to give up the Ptolemaic view of world and bitterly persecuted those among its own children who claimed that it was fundamentally erroneous.

Zodiac
One of the most basic concepts of the Celestial clock in astrology all over the world - and therefore probably a very ancient one - is the dividing of the zodiac into twelve hours of 30° each. Note the ancient 12 and 60 numeric bases.

"Essentially, the zodiac is a celestial coordinate system, or more specifically an ecliptic coordinate system, which takes the ecliptic as the origin of latitude, and the position of the sun at vernal equinox as the origin of longitude."  (wikipedia)

The Ramble Twins Crab Liverish;

Scaly Scorpions Are Good Water Fish.

Ram-Ble = Ram, Bull; Twins = Twins; Crab = Crab; Li-Ver(ish) = Lion, Virgin; Scaly = Scale; Scorpion = Scorpio; Are = Archer; Good = Goat; Water = Water Bearer; Fish = Fish


These and other ancient constellations of stars are, of course, used also in mapping the night sky in modern science of Astronomy.



Horoscope
The word horoscope comes from the Greek words ora and skopos, to watch the hours.  Sun, moon and the planets move regularly on their path from "house to house" and change their positions vis a vis the observer and each other. Their angles vary, so to say, when man looks at them up on the heavens and some times they appear as groups near each other and some times they are far from.

Astrology suggests existential meanings for humanity for these regular celestial movements and mutual relationships in time and space. How is this done and what is the fundamental logic in the system?


The twelve astrological signs
The zodiac is universally divided into twelve houses with traditional symbols for each

Table of astrological signs
from wikipedia 

 

№	Symbol	Long.	Latin name	English translation	Greek name	Sanskrit name	Sumero-Babylonian name[10]
1	♈	0°	Aries	The Ram	Κριός/Kriós	Meṣa (मेष)	MUL LUḪUN.GA "The Agrarian Worker", Dumuzi
2	♉	30°	Taurus	The Bull	Ταῦρος/Tauros	Vṛiṣabha (वृषभ)	MULGU4.AN.NA "The Steer of Heaven"
3	♊	60°	Gemini	The Twins	Δίδυμοι/Didymoe	Mithuna (मिथुन)	MULMAŠ.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL "The Great Twins" (Castor and Pollux)
4	♋	90°	Cancer	The Crab	Καρκῖνος/Karkinos	Karkaṭa (कर्कट)	MULAL.LUL "The Crayfish"
5	♌	120°	Leo	The Lion	Λέων/Léōn	Siṃha (सिंह)	MULUR.GU.LA "The Lion"
6	♍	150°	Virgo	The Maiden	Παρθένος/Parthénos	Kanyā (कन्या)	MULAB.SIN "The Furrow"; "The Furrow, the goddess Shala's ear of corn"
7	♎	180°	Libra	The Scales	Ζυγός/Zygós	Tula (तुला)	zibanitum "The Scales"
8	♏	210°	Scorpio	The Scorpion	Σκoρπιός/Skorpiós	Vṛścika (वृश्चिक)	MULGIR.TAB "The Scorpion"
9	♐	240°	Sagittarius	The (Centaur) Archer	Τοξότης/Toxótēs	Dhanus (धनुष)	MULPA.BIL.SAG, Nedu "soldier"
10	♑	270°	Capricorn	"Goat-horned" (The Sea-Goat)	Αἰγόκερως/Aegókerōs	Makara (मकर)	MULSUḪUR.MAŠ "The Goat-Fish"
11	♒	300°	Aquarius	The Water-Bearer	Ὑδροχόος/Hydrokhóos	Kumbha (कुम्भ)	MULGU.LA "The Great One", later qâ "pitcher"
12	♓	330°	Pisces	The Fish	Ἰχθύες/Ιgthues	Mīna (मीन)	MULSIM.MAḪ "The Tail of the Swallow", later DU.NU.NU "fish-cord"

Ref. Wikipedia

Giving meaning to the signs
Man wishes to give meaning to signs, as Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of Semiotics,  famously noted.

The regular clock table on the sky marked by the paths of Sun, Moon and the planets, is just that - a regular clock table of twelve hours and measured by 30 degrees on the celestial sphere.

Man gives meaning to the zodiac and to the movements up there, as is his nature. God created us so that we give meaning to the things we observe and we are unhappy and unsatisfied with unexplainable or meaningless things. Life void of significance is empty.

These meanings are not, however, subjective ad hoc ideas that come to someone's head while looking at Jupiter in a constellation that somehow that resembles a Lion. No, humanity lives in a continuum of human experience, with memes that in many cases reach back in time to the prehistoric era. We probably carry in our complex brains memories of Paleolithic era and even before that, when we still were very close to our nearest cousins chimpanzees.

And who knows, perhaps we even carry memories in our deepest brain levels from the lizard times!

Accordingly, the significances humanity gives to the constellations in the Zodiac and to the celestial objects moving in them is closely tied to our collective memory and to the civilizations we belong to. Chinese horoscope uses different names and symbols and gives different meanings than the Hindu one or the Babylonian one. 

But the meanings are hallowed by the human tradition, by those wise books and millennia of observation.

Humanity lives more or less half of its life under that beautiful and intriguing night sky and there is longing for order, eternity, paths of life that we can know and control, also in the future.

Divine task!
Predicting is difficult, especially predicting the future.
Therefore we justly call it divinitation.

Man and Sky gods (1)

בראשׁית ברא אלהים את השׁמים ואת הארץ׃

in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram

Gen 1:1

The message of the God of Israel to the humanity He has created begins with this majestic sentence that attributes the entire University to the one and only God.

Genesis is a slaughterhouse of idols, all kinds of powers, mythological beings and forces that man has created to his own image.  Sky above our heads, sun in the day time, moon and stars at nights, has been - and still is to some - a fertile source of such powers. Since prehistoric times the accurate clockwork of Sky and its movements has also been a significant element in human conception of existence. It still is.

Names of the planets

In Western languages the planets still carry the names of Olympic gods given to them by the Greeks and Romans in antiquity. The word planet itself is Greek πλανήτης αστήρ planētēs astēr wandering star.

As said, the association of planets with these or other gods is a very complex phenomenon since humans are complex beings with very sophisticated brain and rich imagination.

English	Greek	Pantheon
Sun	Helios	Sun god
Moon	Selene	Moon god
Mercury	Hermes	swift messenger of gods
Mars	Ares	god of war
Venus	Aphrodite	goddess of love
Jupiter	Zeus	highest god
Saturn	Cronos	god of agriculture
Uranus	Ouranos	personification of sky
Neptune	Poseidon	god of water and sea

Rulers of the Sky
The relationship between man and Sky gods is very complex and greatly varies in different pre-scientific civilizations. However, by nature of human brain additivity, the two dominant celestial objects, Sun during the day and Moon at night, project social hierarchy and reflect fundamental religious concepts.


Sun
Glorious Sun was worshipped as god in many cultures and is a powerful symbolic sign of royalty.


We are still amazed by the brilliance of art and richness of ideas in Sun worship of the ancient Egyptians. It can not really be understood without personally experiencing the absolute dominance of Sun on the almost always blue sky above the Nile Valley. What else could be a fitting symbol to the ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt but to be the beloved son of Ra or son of Amon? The almost monotheistic worship of sun by Pharaoh Akhenaten is a powerful phenomenon around the time of Moses. 



Sun worship can be found in many other cultures in areas where sun dominates the sky during the day - we are well aware of its importance for example to the Incas at the high mountains of Peru.


Moon
The way moon rules the night is a bit different from the absolute bright dominance of the Sun during the day. The moon is more mysterious, has its phases, its crescendos and decrescendo and the moon even disappears and appears again in regular manner. Sometimes it is yellowish, sometimes reddish and its surface has details visible to plain eyes. The menstruation cycle of women is close to the moon cycle of 28 days. Full moon at its best is so beautiful but also somewhat eerie in comparison to plain daylight.



We may understand that humanity has seen in Sun a male aspect and Moon goddesses are usually feminine.




Sky crises
Human religiosity takes active part in the events of the nature and human life. It tries to influence the working of the Nature and reacts with a rich palette of emotions and explanations to what is observed. Projection of human concepts, ideas, belief systems and hierarchies to the Sky is full of significant symbolism and social rites, habits and traditions.

The relation with Sky gods is felt particularly sharply at the times of crises up there.

One such crisis is the daily setting of the Sun to the west... will it come up again tomorrow?

Well, the long experience of humanity has been that yes, it does come up again. The feeling of crisis has been muted by this profound security that it is okay, it will come back. In the past, human curiosity has developed many explanations to the strange behaviour of Sun on the Sky above the centre of the universe from Egyptian superstitions of huge dragons to the Greek cool headed scientific theories.

A much more worrying thing is the rare eclipse of the Sun, as it is unpredictable and unexplainable. This most terrifying and unexplained event - the dimming and darkening of Sun in the middle of the day - still causes trembling in the hearts of  many people, that eerie dim light and the total silence of birds.

Humanity has noticed that there are two major crises up there - the darkest time of the year when Sun gets so weak and the brightest time of the year when Sun is very strong. These are more prominent in the northern and southern hemispheres than at equatorial levels culminating in the far North and South in times when Sun does not rise at all or does not get down at all.

To help the weak Sun, ancient Romans held a big party at the darkest time of the year. Emperor Constantine the Great was himself a worshipper of Victorious Sun and he donated this party, one of the greatest pagan feast in Roman calendar, to Jesus Christ and made it His birthday - 25th of December.
In Nordic countries huge bonfires were lit during these two crises, the solstices, (latin sol, sun, sistere, stand still) to help the Sun and to rejoice with its victory.

In hoc signo vinces
I find it very touching, how Lord Jesus wins people by what is important to that particular person.

Simon and Andrew where overwhelmed by their catch of fish.

Emperor Constantine the Great was won by a vision in his favorite god, sol invictus. Instead of worshipping the celestial object he learned to worship the One who has made it.