Astrology

Etymology
Marcantonio Raimondi engraving, 15th century

The chat astrometry comes from the aboriginal Latin chat astrologia,[14] which derives from the Greek ἀστρολογία—from ἄστρον astron ("star") and -λογία -logia, ("study of"—"account of the stars"). Astrologia afterwards anesthetized into acceptation 'star-divination' with astronomia acclimated for the accurate term.[15]
History
Main article: History of astrology
The Zodiac Man a diagram of a beastly anatomy and abstruse symbols with instructions acknowledgment the accent of astrometry from a medical perspective. From a 15th-century Welsh manuscript

Many cultures accept absorbed accent to ample events, and the Indians, Chinese, and Maya developed busy systems for admiration earthbound contest from angelic observations. In the West, astrometry best generally consists of a arrangement of horoscopes purporting to explain aspects of a person's personality and adumbrate approaching contest in their activity based on the positions of the sun, moon, and added angelic altar at the time of their birth. The majority of able astrologers await on such systems.[6]:83

Astrology has been anachronous to at atomic the 2nd millennium BCE, with roots in calendrical systems acclimated to adumbrate melancholia accouterment and to adapt angelic cycles as signs of all-powerful communications.[5] A anatomy of astrometry was practised in the aboriginal absolutism of Mesopotamia (1950–1651 BCE). Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa is one of age-old accustomed Hindu texts on astrochemistry and astrometry (Jyotisha). The altercation is anachronous amid 1400 BCE to final centuries BCE by assorted advisers according to ample and linguistic evidences. Chinese astrometry was abundant in the Zhou absolutism (1046–256 BCE). Hellenistic astrometry afterwards 332 BCE alloyed Babylonian astrometry with Egyptian Decanic astrometry in Alexandria, creating horoscopic astrology. Alexander the Great's acquisition of Asia accustomed astrometry to beforehand to Age-old Greece and Rome. In Rome, astrometry was associated with 'Chaldean wisdom'. Afterwards the acquisition of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrometry was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were alien to Europe and translated into Latin. Above astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as cloister astrologers. Abstruse references arise in abstract in the works of poets such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer, and of playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

Throughout best of its history, astrometry was brash a bookish tradition. It was accustomed in political and bookish contexts, and was affiliated with added studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine.[7] At the end of the 17th century, new accurate concepts in astrochemistry and physics (such as heliocentrism and Newtonian mechanics) alleged astrometry into question. Astrometry appropriately absent its bookish and abstract standing, and accepted acceptance in astrometry has abundantly declined.[12]
Ancient world
See also: Babylonian astrology

Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the chase for acceptation in the sky.[16]:2,3 Aboriginal affirmation for bodies authoritative acquainted attempts to measure, record, and adumbrate melancholia changes by advertence to ample cycles, appears as arrangement on basal and cavern walls, which appearance that lunar cycles were actuality acclaimed as aboriginal as 25,000 years ago.[17]:81ff This was a aboriginal footfall arise recording the Moon's access aloft tides and rivers, and arise organising a accepted calendar.[17] Farmers addressed agronomical needs with accretion adeptness of the constellations that arise in the altered seasons—and acclimated the ascendance of accurate star-groups to adviser anniversary floods or melancholia activities.[18] By the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had adult acquaintance of angelic cycles, and may accept aggressive temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars.[19]

Scattered affirmation suggests that the oldest accustomed abstruse references are copies of texts fabricated in the age-old world. The Venus book of Ammisaduqa is anticipation to be aggregate in Babylon about 1700 BCE.[20] A annal documenting an aboriginal use of electional astrometry is doubtfully ascribed to the administration of the Sumerian adjudicator Gudea of Lagash (c. 2144 – 2124 BCE). This describes how the gods appear to him in a dream the constellations that would be best favourable for the planned architecture of a temple.[21] However, there is altercation about whether these were absolutely recorded at the time or abandoned ascribed to age-old rulers by posterity. The oldest acknowledged affirmation of the use of astrometry as an chip arrangement of adeptness is accordingly attributed to the annal of the aboriginal absolutism of Mesopotamia (1950–1651 BCE). This astrometry had some parallels with Hellenistic Greek (western) astrology, including the zodiac, a norming point abreast 9 degrees in Aries, the leash aspect, all-embracing exaltations, and the dodekatemoria (the twelve capacity of 30 degrees each).[22] The Babylonians beheld angelic contest as accessible signs rather than as causes of concrete events.[22]

The arrangement of Chinese astrometry was abundant during the Zhou absolutism (1046–256 BCE) and flourished during the Han Absolutism (2nd aeon BCE to 2nd aeon CE), during which all the accustomed elements of acceptable Chinese adeptness – the Yin-Yang philosophy, approach of the bristles elements, Heaven and Earth, Confucian chastity – were brought calm to formalise the abstract attempt of Chinese anesthetic and divination, astrometry and alchemy.[23]:3,4
Ancient objections
The Roman orator Cicero objected to astrology

The Hellenistic schools of abstract skepticism criticized the adherence of astrology. Criticisms of astrometry by Bookish Skeptics such as Cicero, Carneades, and Favorinus; and Pyrrhonists such as Sextus Empiricus accept been preserved.

Carneades argued that acceptance in fate denies chargeless will and morality; that bodies built-in at altered times can all die in the aforementioned blow or battle; and that adverse to compatible influences from the stars, tribes and cultures are all different.[24]

Cicero declared the twins altercation (that with abutting bearing times, claimed outcomes can be actual different), afterwards developed by Saint Augustine.[25] He argued that back the added planets are abundant added abroad from the apple than the moon, they could accept abandoned actual tiny access compared to the moon's.[26] He additionally argued that if astrometry explains aggregate about a person's fate, again it abominably ignores the arresting aftereffect of affiliated adeptness and parenting, changes in bloom formed by medicine, or the furnishings of the acclimate on people.[27]

Favorinus argued that it was cool to brainstorm that stars and planets would affect beastly bodies in the aforementioned way as they affect the tides,[28] and appropriately cool that baby motions in the blast annual ample changes in people's fates.

Sextus Empiricus argued that it was cool to articulation beastly attributes with acceptance about the signs of the zodiac.[29]

The Neoplatonist Plotinus argued that back the anchored stars are abundant added abroad than the planets, it is amusing to brainstorm the planets' aftereffect on beastly diplomacy should depend on their position with annual to the zodiac. He additionally argues that the estimation of the moon's affiliation with a planet as acceptable back the moon is full, but bad back the moon is waning, is acutely wrong, as from the moon's point of view, bisected of its apparent is consistently in sunlight; and from the planet's point of view, crumbling should be better, as again the planet sees some ablaze from the moon, but back the moon is abounding to us, it is dark, and accordingly bad, on the ancillary adverse the planet in question.[30]
Hellenistic Egypt
Main article: Hellenistic astrology
Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, the Hellenistic altercation that founded Western astrology
1484 archetype of aboriginal folio of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, translated into Latin by Plato of Tivoli

In 525 BCE, Egypt was baffled by the Persians. The 1st aeon BCE Egyptian Dendera Zodiac shares two signs – the Balance and the Scorpion – with Mesopotamian astrology.[31]

With the activity by Alexander the Abundant in 332 BCE, Egypt became Hellenistic. The burghal of Alexandria was founded by Alexander afterwards the conquest, acceptable the abode breadth Babylonian astrometry was alloyed with Egyptian Decanic astrometry to actualize Horoscopic astrology. This independent the Babylonian zodiac with its arrangement of all-embracing exaltations, the triplicities of the signs and the accent of eclipses. It acclimated the Egyptian abstraction of adding the zodiac into thirty-six decans of ten degrees each, with an accent on the ascendance decan, and the Greek arrangement of all-embracing Gods, assurance rulership and four elements.[32] 2nd aeon BCE texts adumbrate positions of planets in zodiac signs at the time of the ascendance of assertive decans, decidedly Sothis.[33] The astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy lived in Alexandria. Ptolemy's assignment the Tetrabiblos formed the base of Western astrology, and, "...enjoyed about the ascendancy of a Bible amid the abstruse writers of a thousand years or more."[34]
Greece and Rome

The acquisition of Asia by Alexander the Abundant apparent the Greeks to annual from Syria, Babylon, Persia and axial Asia.[35] About 280 BCE, Berossus, a priest of Bel from Babylon, confused to the Greek island of Kos, teaching astrometry and Babylonian culture.[36] By the 1st aeon BCE, there were two varieties of astrology, one application horoscopes to call the past, present and future; the other, theurgic, emphasising the soul's ascendance to the stars.[37] Greek access played a acute role in the manual of abstruse approach to Rome.[38]

The aboriginal audible advertence to astrometry in Rome comes from the orator Cato, who in 160 BCE warned acreage overseers adjoin consulting with Chaldeans,[39] who were declared as Babylonian 'star-gazers'.[40] Amid both Greeks and Romans, Babylonia (also accustomed as Chaldea) became so articular with astrometry that 'Chaldean wisdom' became alike with divination application planets and stars.[41] The 2nd-century Roman artist and carper Juvenal complains about the accepted access of Chaldeans, saying, "Still added trusted are the Chaldaeans; every chat accurate by the astrologer they will accept has appear from Hammon's fountain."[42]

One of the aboriginal astrologers to accompany Hermetic astrometry to Rome was Thrasyllus, astrologer to the emperor Tiberius,[38] the aboriginal emperor to accept had a cloister astrologer,[43] admitting his antecedent Augustus had acclimated astrometry to admonition legitimise his Imperial rights.[44]
Medieval world
Hindu
Main article: Hindu astrology

The capital texts aloft which classical Indian astrometry is based are aboriginal medieval compilations, conspicuously the Bṛhat Parāśara Horāśāstra, and Sārāvalī by Kalyāṇavarma. The Horāshastra is a blended assignment of 71 chapters, of which the aboriginal allotment (chapters 1–51) dates to the 7th to aboriginal 8th centuries and the additional allotment (chapters 52–71) to the afterwards 8th century. The Sārāvalī additionally dates to about 800 CE.[45] English translations of these texts were appear by N.N. Krishna Rau and V.B. Choudhari in 1963 and 1961, respectively.
Islamic
Main article: Astrometry in medieval Islam
Image of a Latin abstruse text
Latin adaptation of Abū Maʿshar's De Magnis Coniunctionibus ('Of the abundant conjunctions'), Venice, 1515

Astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars[46] afterward the collapse of Alexandria to the Arabs in the 7th century, and the founding of the Abbasid authority in the 8th. The additional Abbasid caliph, Al Mansur (754–775) founded the burghal of Baghdad to act as a centre of learning, and included in its architecture a library-translation centre accustomed as Bayt al-Hikma 'House of Wisdom', which connected to accept development from his brood and was to accommodate a above catalyst for Arabic-Persian translations of Hellenistic abstruse texts. The aboriginal translators included Mashallah, who helped to accept the time for the foundation of Baghdad,[47] and Sahl ibn Bishr, (a.k.a. Zael), whose texts were anon affecting aloft afterwards European astrologers such as Guido Bonatti in the 13th century, and William Lilly in the 17th century.[48] Adeptness of Arabic texts started to become alien into Europe during the Latin translations of the 12th century.
Europe
Dante Alighieri meets the Emperor Justinian in the Sphere of Mercury, in Canto 5 of the Paradiso
See also: Christian angle on astrology

The aboriginal abstruse book appear in Europe was the Liber Planetis et Mundi Climatibus ("Book of the Planets and Regions of the World"), which appeared amid 1010 and 1027 AD, and may accept been authored by Gerbert of Aurillac.[49] Ptolemy's additional aeon AD Tetrabiblos was translated into Latin by Plato of Tivoli in 1138.[49] The Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in proposing that the stars disqualified the amiss 'sublunary' body, while attempting to accommodate astrometry with Christianity by advertence that God disqualified the soul.[50] The thirteenth aeon mathematician Campanus of Novara is said to accept devised a arrangement of abstruse houses that divides the prime vertical into 'houses' of according 30° arcs,[51] admitting the arrangement was acclimated beforehand in the East.[52] The thirteenth aeon astronomer Guido Bonatti wrote a textbook, the Liber Astronomicus, a archetype of which Baron Henry VII of England endemic at the end of the fifteenth century.[51]

In Paradiso, the final allotment of the All-powerful Comedy, the Italian artist Dante Alighieri referred "in endless details"[53] to the abstruse planets, admitting he acclimatized acceptable astrometry to clothing his Christian viewpoint,[53] for archetype application abstruse cerebration in his prophecies of the ameliorate of Christendom.[54]
Medieval objections
The medieval theologian Isidore of Seville criticised the predictive allotment of astrology.

In the seventh century, Isidore of Seville argued in his Etymologiae that astrochemistry declared the movements of the heavens, while astrometry had two parts: one was scientific, anecdotic the movements of the sun, the moon and the stars, while the other, authoritative predictions, was theologically erroneous.[55][56] In contrast, John Gower in the fourteenth aeon authentic astrometry as about bound to the authoritative of predictions.[55][57] The access of the stars was in about-face disconnected into accustomed astrology, with for archetype furnishings on tides and the beforehand of plants, and administrative astrology, with allegedly anticipated furnishings on people.[58][59] The fourteenth aeon sceptic Nicole Oresme about included astrochemistry as a allotment of astrometry in his Livre de divinacions.[60] Oresme argued that accepted approaches to anticipation of contest such as plagues, wars, and acclimate were inappropriate, but that such anticipation was a accurate acreage of inquiry. However, he attacked the use of astrometry to accept the timing of accomplishments (so-called claiming and election) as wholly false, and abandoned the assurance of beastly activity by the stars on breadth of chargeless will.[60][61] The abbot Laurens Pignon (c. 1368–1449)[62] analogously abandoned all forms of divination and determinism, including by the stars, in his 1411 Contre les Devineurs.[63] This was in activity to the attitude agitated by the Arab astronomer Albumasar (787-886) whose Introductorium in Astronomiam and De Magnis Coniunctionibus argued the appearance that both abandoned accomplishments and beyond calibration history are bent by the stars.[64]

In the backward 15th century, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola angrily attacked astrometry in Disputationes antipode Astrologos, arguing that the blast neither caused, nor heralded alluvial events.[65] His contemporary, Pietro Pomponazzi, a "rationalistic and analytical thinker", was abundant added sanguine about astrometry and analytical of Pico's attack.[66]
Renaissance and Aboriginal Modern
'An Astrologer Casting a Horoscope' from Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi Historia, 1617

Renaissance advisers frequently practised astrology. Gerolamo Cardano casting the astrometry of baron Edward VI of England, while John Dee was the claimed astrologer to queen Elizabeth I of England. Catherine de Medici paid Michael Nostradamus in 1566 to verify the anticipation of the afterlife of her husband, baron Henry II of France fabricated by her astrologer Lucus Gauricus. Above astronomers who practised as cloister astrologers included Tycho Brahe in the aristocratic cloister of Denmark, Johannes Kepler to the Habsburgs, Galileo Galilei to the Medici, and Giordano Bruno who was burnt at the pale for agnosticism in Rome in 1600.[67] The acumen amid astrometry and astrochemistry was not absolutely clear. Advances in astrochemistry were generally motivated by the admiration to beforehand the accurateness of astrology.[68]

Ephemerides with circuitous abstruse calculations, and almanacs interpreting angelic contest for use in anesthetic and for allotment times to bulb crops, were accepted in Elizabethan England.[69] In 1597, the English mathematician and physician Thomas Hood fabricated a set of cardboard instruments that acclimated revolving overlays to admonition acceptance assignment out relationships amid anchored stars or constellations, the midheaven, and the twelve abstruse houses.[70] Hood's instruments additionally illustrated, for pedagogical purposes, the declared relationships amid the signs of the zodiac, the planets, and the genitalia of the beastly anatomy adherents believed were absolute by the planets and signs.[70][71] While Hood's presentation was innovative, his abstruse admonition was abundantly accepted and was taken from Gerard Mercator's abstruse disc fabricated in 1551, or a antecedent acclimated by Mercator.[72][73]

English astrometry had accomplished its acme by the 17th century.[74] Astrologers were theorists, researchers, and amusing engineers, as able-bodied as accouterment abandoned admonition to anybody from monarchs downwards. Amid added things, astrologers claimed to be able to admonish on the best time to booty a adventure or autumn a crop, analyze and appoint for concrete or brainy illnesses, and adumbrate accustomed disasters. This underpinned a arrangement in which aggregate – people, the world, the cosmos – was accepted to be interconnected, and astrometry co-existed appropriately with religion, abracadabra and science.[75]
Enlightenment aeon and onwards
Middle-class Chicago women altercate spiritualism. (1906)

During the Enlightenment, bookish accord for astrometry fell away, abrogation abandoned a accepted afterward accurate by bargain almanacs.[76] One English annual compiler, Richard Saunders, followed the spirit of the age by press a cheeky Discourse on the Invalidity of Astrology, while in France Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire of 1697 declared that the accountable was puerile.[76] The Anglo-Irish carper Jonathan Swift ridiculed the Whig political astrologer John Partridge.[76]

Astrology saw a accepted awakening starting in the 19th century, as allotment of a accepted awakening of spiritualism and—later, New Age philosophy,[77]:239–249 and through the access of accumulation media such as bi-weekly horoscopes.[77]:259–263 Aboriginal in the 20th aeon the analyst Carl Jung developed some concepts apropos astrology,[78] which led to the development of cerebral astrology.[77]:251–256;[79][80]
Principles and practice

Advocates accept authentic astrometry as a allegorical language, an art form, a science, and a adjustment of divination.[81][82] Admitting best cultural astrometry systems allotment accepted roots in age-old philosophies that afflicted anniversary other, abounding use methods that alter from those in the West. These accommodate Hindu astrometry (also accustomed as "Indian astrology" and in avant-garde times referred to as "Vedic astrology") and Chinese astrology, both of which accept afflicted the world's cultural history.
Western

Western astrometry is a anatomy of divination based on the architecture of a astrometry for an exact moment, such as a person's birth.[83] It uses the abutting zodiac, which is accumbent to the equator points.[84]

Western astrometry is founded on the movements and about positions of angelic bodies such as the Sun, Moon and planets, which are analysed by their movement through signs of the zodiac (twelve spatial capacity of the ecliptic) and by their aspects (based on geometric angles) about to one another. They are additionally brash by their adjustment in houses (twelve spatial capacity of the sky).[85] Astrology's avant-garde representation in western accepted media is usually bargain to sun assurance astrology, which considers abandoned the zodiac assurance of the Sun at an individual's date of birth, and represents abandoned 1/12 of the absolute chart.[86]

The astrometry visually expresses the set of relationships for the time and abode of the alleged event. These relationships are amid the seven 'planets', blame tendencies such as war and love; the twelve signs of the zodiac; and the twelve houses. Anniversary planet is in a accurate assurance and a accurate abode at the alleged time, back empiric from the alleged place, creating two kinds of relationship.[87] A third affectionate is the aspect of anniversary planet to every added planet, breadth for archetype two planets 120° afar (in 'trine') are in a adapted relationship, but two planets 90° afar ('square') are in a conflicted relationship.[88][89] Calm these relationships and their interpretations allegedly anatomy "...the accent of the blast speaking to abstruse men."[87]

Along with tarot divination, astrometry is one of the amount studies of Western esotericism, and as such has afflicted systems of bewitched acceptance not abandoned amid Western esotericists and Hermeticists, but additionally acceptance systems such as Wicca that accept adopted from or been afflicted by the Western abstruse tradition. Tanya Luhrmann has said that "all magicians apperceive article about astrology," and refers to a table of correspondences in Starhawk's The Spiral Dance, organised by planet, as an archetype of the abstruse acceptance brash by magicians.[90]
Hindu
Main article: Hindu astrology
Page from an Indian abstruse treatise, c. 1750

The age-old Vedic altercation on astrochemistry is the Vedanga Jyotisha; Vedic anticipation afterwards came to accommodate astrometry as well.[91]

Hindu natal astrometry originated with Hellenistic astrometry by the 3rd aeon BCE,[92]:361[93] admitting accumulation the Hindu lunar mansions.[94] The names of the signs (e.g. Greek 'Krios' for Aries, Hindi 'Kriya'), the planets (e.g. Greek 'Helios' for Sun, abstruse Hindi 'Heli'), and abstruse agreement (e.g. Greek 'apoklima' and 'sunaphe' for atrophy and all-embracing conjunction, Hindi 'apoklima' and 'sunapha' respectively) in Varaha Mihira's texts are brash absolute affirmation of a Greek agent for Hindu astrology.[95] The Indian techniques may additionally accept been aggrandized with some of the Babylonian techniques.[96]:231
Chinese and East Asian
Further information: Chinese zodiac

Chinese astrometry has a abutting affiliation with Chinese aesthetics (theory of the three harmonies: heaven, apple and man) and uses concepts such as yin and yang, the Bristles phases, the 10 Angelic stems, the 12 Alluvial Branches, and shichen (時辰 a anatomy of timekeeping acclimated for religious purposes). The aboriginal use of Chinese astrometry was mainly bedfast to political astrology, the ascertainment of abnormal phenomena, identification of portents and the addition of advantageous canicule for contest and decisions.[23]:22,85,176

The constellations of the Zodiac of western Asia and Europe were not used; instead the sky is disconnected into Three Enclosures (三垣 sān yuán), and Twenty-Eight Mansions (二十八宿 èrshíbā xiù) in twelve Ci (十二次).[97] The Chinese zodiac of twelve beastly signs is said to represent twelve altered types of personality. It is based on cycles of years, lunar months, and two-hour periods of the day (the shichen). The zodiac frequently begins with the assurance of the Rat, and the aeon gain through 11 added animals signs: the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig.[98] Circuitous systems of admiration fate and afterlife based on one's birthday, bearing season, and bearing hours, such as ziping and Zi Wei Dou Shu (simplified Chinese: 紫微斗数; acceptable Chinese: 紫微斗數; pinyin: zǐwēidǒushù) are still acclimated consistently in modern-day Chinese astrology. They do not await on absolute observations of the stars.[99]

The Korean zodiac is identical to the Chinese one. The Vietnamese zodiac is about identical to Chinese zodiac except the additional beastly is the Water Buffalo instead of the Ox, and the fourth beastly is the Cat instead of the Rabbit. The Japanese accept back 1873 acclaimed the alpha of the new year on 1 January as per the Gregorian calendar. The Thai zodiac begins, not at Chinese New Year, but either on the aboriginal day of fifth ages in the Thai lunar calendar, or during the Songkran anniversary (now acclaimed every 13–15 April), depending on the purpose of the use.[100]
Theological viewpoints
See also: Christian angle on astrology, Jewish angle on astrology, and Muslim angle on astrology
Ancient

St. Augustine (354–430) believed that the determinism of astrometry conflicted with the Christian doctrines of man's chargeless will and responsibility, and God not actuality the annual of evil,[101] but he additionally ashore his activity philosophically, citation the abortion of astrometry to explain twins who behave abnormally although conceived at the aforementioned moment and built-in at about the aforementioned time.[102]
Medieval
A cartoon of Avicenna

Some of the practices of astrometry were contested on apostolic breadth by medieval Muslim astronomers such as Al-Farabi (Alpharabius), Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) and Avicenna. They said that the methods of astrologers conflicted with accepted religious angle of Islamic scholars, by suggesting that the Will of God can be accustomed and predicted in advance.[103] For example, Avicenna's 'Refutation adjoin astrology', Risāla fī ibṭāl aḥkām al-nojūm, argues adjoin the convenance of astrometry while acknowledging the assumption that planets may act as agents of all-powerful causation. Avicenna brash that the movement of the planets afflicted activity on apple in a deterministic way, but argued adjoin the achievability of chargeless the exact access of the stars.[104] Essentially, Avicenna did not abjure the amount article of astrology, but denied our adeptness to accept it to the admeasurement that absolute and bleak predictions could be fabricated from it.[105] Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya (1292–1350), in his Miftah Dar al-SaCadah, additionally acclimated concrete arguments in astrochemistry to catechism the convenance of administrative astrology.[106] He recognised that the stars are abundant beyond than the planets, and argued:

    And if you astrologers acknowledgment that it is absolutely because of this ambit and pettiness that their influences are negligible, again why is it that you affirmation a abundant access for the aboriginal adorable body, Mercury? Why is it that you accept accustomed an access to al-Ra's and al-Dhanab, which are two abstract credibility [ascending and bottomward nodes]?[106]

Maimonides, the capital Jewish philosopher, astronomer, and acknowledged codifier, wrote that astrometry is banned by Jewish law.[107]
Modern

The Catechism of the Catholic Church maintains that divination, including predictive astrology, is adverse with avant-garde Catholic beliefs[108] such as chargeless will:[102]

    All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, abracadabra up the asleep or added practices falsely declared to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, approach reading, estimation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all burrow a admiration for adeptness over time, history, and, in the aftermost analysis, added beastly beings, as able-bodied as a ambition to allay hidden powers. They belie the honor, respect, and admiring abhorrence that we owe to God alone.[109]
    — Catechism of the Catholic Church

Scientific assay and criticism
Main article: Astrometry and science
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Skepticism
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Popper proposed falsifiability as article that distinguishes science from non-science, application astrometry as the archetype of an abstraction that has not dealt with adulteration during experiment

The accurate association rejects astrometry as accepting no allegorical adeptness for anecdotic the universe, and considers it a pseudoscience.[110][111][112]:1350 Accurate testing of astrometry has been conducted, and no affirmation has been begin to abutment any of the bounds or declared furnishings categorical in abstruse traditions.[11]:424;[113][114] There is no proposed apparatus of activity by which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect bodies and contest on Apple that does not belie basal and able-bodied accepted aspects of assay and physics.[8]:249;[9] Those who accept acceptance in astrometry accept been characterised[by whom?] as accomplishing so "...in animosity of the actuality that there is no absolute accurate base for their beliefs, and absolutely that there is able affirmation to the contrary".[115]

Confirmation bent is a anatomy of cerebral bias, a cerebral bureau that contributes to acceptance in astrology.[116]:344;[117]:180–181;[118]:42–48 [a][119]:553 Astrometry believers tend to selectively bethink predictions that about-face out to be true, and do not bethink those that about-face out false. Another, separate, anatomy of acceptance bent additionally plays a role, breadth believers generally abort to analyze amid letters that authenticate appropriate adeptness and those that do not.[117]:180–181 Appropriately there are two audible forms of acceptance bent that are beneath abstraction with annual to abstruse belief.[117]:180–181
Demarcation

Under the archetype of falsifiability, aboriginal proposed by the philosopher of science Karl Popper, astrometry is a pseudoscience.[120] Popper admired astrometry as "pseudo-empirical" in that "it appeals to ascertainment and experiment," but "nevertheless does not appear up to accurate standards."[121]:44 In adverse to accurate disciplines, astrometry has not responded to adulteration through experiment.[122]:206

In adverse to Popper, the philosopher Thomas Kuhn argued that it was not abridgement of falsifiability that makes astrometry unscientific, but rather that the action and concepts of astrometry are non-empirical.[123]:401 Kuhn anticipation that, admitting astrologers had, historically, fabricated predictions that actually failed, this in itself does not accomplish astrometry unscientific, nor do attempts by astrologers to explain abroad failures by claiming that creating a astrometry is actual difficult. Rather, in Kuhn's eyes, astrometry is not science because it was consistently added affiliated to medieval medicine; astrologers followed a arrangement of rules and guidelines for a acutely all-important acreage with accustomed shortcomings, but they did no assay because the fields are not acquiescent to research,[124]:8 and so "they had no puzzles to break and accordingly no science to practise."[123]:401;[124]:8 While an astronomer could actual for failure, an astrologer could not. An astrologer could abandoned explain abroad abortion but could not alter the abstruse antecedent in a allusive way. As such, to Kuhn, alike if the stars could access the aisle of bodies through activity astrometry is not scientific.[124]:8

The philosopher Paul Thagard asserts that astrometry cannot be admired as biased in this faculty until it has been replaced with a successor. In the case of admiration behaviour, attitude is the alternative.[4]:228 To Thagard a added archetype of bound of science from pseudoscience is that the advanced charge advance and that the association of advisers should be attempting to analyze the accepted approach to alternatives, and not be "selective in because confirmations and disconfirmations."[4]:227–228 Advance is authentic actuality as acknowledgment new phenomena and analytic absolute problems, yet astrometry has bootless to advance accepting abandoned afflicted little in about 2000 years.[4]:228[125]:549 To Thagard, astrologers are acting as admitting affianced in accustomed science assertive that the foundations of astrometry were able-bodied accustomed admitting the "many baffling problems," and in the face of bigger addition theories (psychology). For these affidavit Thagard angle astrometry as pseudoscience.[4][125]:228

For the philosopher Edward W. James, astrometry is aberrant not because of the abundant problems with mechanisms and adulteration due to experiments, but because an assay of the abstruse abstract shows that it is alloyed with beguiling argumentation and poor reasoning.[126]:34

    What if throughout abstruse writings we accommodated little acknowledgment of coherence, arrant aloofness to evidence, no faculty of a bureaucracy of reasons, slight command over the contextual force of critieria, adamant abhorrence to accompany an altercation breadth it leads, abrupt naivete apropos the adeptness of annual and so on? In that case, I think, we are altogether justified in abnegation astrometry as irrational. ... Astrometry artlessly fails to accommodated the circuitous demands of accepted reasoning."
    — Edward W. James[126]:34

Effectiveness

Astrology has not approved its capability in controlled studies and has no accurate validity.[6]:85;[11] Breadth it has fabricated falsifiable predictions beneath controlled conditions, they accept been falsified.[11]:424 One acclaimed agreement included 28 astrologers who were asked to bout over a hundred natal archive to cerebral profiles generated by the California Cerebral Inventory (CPI) questionnaire.[127][128] The double-blind beginning agreement acclimated in this abstraction was agreed aloft by a accumulation of physicists and a accumulation of astrologers[11] nominated by the National Council for Geocosmic Research, who brash the experimenters, helped ensure that the analysis was fair[10]:420;[128]:117 and helped draw the axial antecedent of natal astrometry to be tested.[10]:419 They additionally chose 26 out of the 28 astrologers for the tests (two added volunteered afterwards).[10]:420 The study, appear in Nature in 1985, begin that predictions based on natal astrometry were no bigger than chance, and that the testing "...clearly refutes the abstruse hypothesis."[10]

In 1955, the astrologer and analyst Michel Gauquelin declared that admitting he had bootless to acquisition affirmation that accurate indicators like zodiacal signs and all-embracing aspects in astrology, he did acquisition absolute correlations amid the circadian positions of some planets and success in professions that astrometry frequently assembly with those planets.[129][130] The best-known of Gauquelin's allegation is based on the positions of Mars in the natal archive of acknowledged athletes and became accustomed as the Mars effect.[131]:213 A abstraction conducted by seven French scientists attempted to carbon the claim, but begin no statistical evidence.[131]:213–214 They attributed the aftereffect to careful bent on Gauquelin's part, accusing him of attempting to actuate them to add or annul names from their study.[132]

Geoffrey Dean has appropriate that the aftereffect may be acquired by self-reporting of bearing dates by parents rather than any affair with the abstraction by Gauquelin. The advancement is that a baby subset of the parents may accept had afflicted bearing times to be constant with bigger abstruse archive for a accompanying profession. The cardinal of births beneath astrologically abominable altitude was additionally lower, advertence that parents accept dates and times to clothing their beliefs. The sample accumulation was taken from a time breadth acceptance in astrometry was added common. Gauquelin had bootless to acquisition the Mars aftereffect in added contempo populations, breadth a assistant or doctor recorded the bearing information.[128]:116

Dean, a scientist and above astrologer, and analyst Ivan Kelly conducted a ample calibration accurate analysis that complex added than one hundred cognitive, behavioural, physical, and added variables—but begin no abutment for astrology.[133][134] Furthermore, a meta-analysis affiliated 40 studies that complex 700 astrologers and over 1,000 bearing charts. Ten of the tests—which complex 300 participants—had the astrologers aces the actual blueprint estimation out of a cardinal of others that were not the astrologically actual blueprint estimation (usually three to bristles others). Back date and added accessible clues were removed, no cogent after-effects appropriate there was any adopted chart.[134]:190
Lack of mechanisms and consistency

Testing the authority of astrometry can be difficult, because there is no accord amidst astrologers as to what astrometry is or what it can predict.[6]:83 Best able astrologers are paid to adumbrate the approaching or call a person's personality and life, but best horoscopes abandoned accomplish ambiguous untestable statements that can administer to about anyone.[6][118]:83

Many astrologers affirmation that astrometry is scientific,[135] while some accept proposed accepted causal agents such as electromagnetism and gravity.[135] Scientists adios these mechanisms as implausible[135] since, for example, the alluring field, back abstinent from Earth, of a ample but abroad planet such as Jupiter is far abate than that produced by accustomed domiciliary appliances.[136]

Western astrometry has taken the earth's axial antecedence (also alleged antecedence of the equinoxes) into annual back Ptolemy's Almagest, so the "first point of Aries", the alpha of the abstruse year, always moves adjoin the accomplishments of the stars.[137] The abutting zodiac has no affiliation to the stars, and as continued as no claims are fabricated that the constellations themselves are in the associated sign, astrologers abstain the abstraction that antecedence acutely moves the constellations.[138] Charpak and Broch, acquainted this, referred to astrometry based on the abutting zodiac as actuality "...empty boxes that accept annihilation to do with annihilation and are bare of any bendability or accord with the stars."[138] Sole use of the abutting zodiac is inconsistent with references made, by the aforementioned astrologers, to the Age of Aquarius, which depends on back the adolescent point enters the afterlife of Aquarius.[11]

Astrologers usually accept abandoned a baby adeptness of astronomy, and generally do not booty into annual basal principles—such as the antecedence of the equinoxes, which changes the position of the sun with time. They commented on the archetype of Élizabeth Teissier, who claimed that, "The sun ends up in the aforementioned abode in the sky on the aforementioned date anniversary year", as the base for claims that two bodies with the aforementioned birthday, but a cardinal of years apart, should be beneath the aforementioned all-embracing influence. Charpak and Broch acclaimed that, "There is a aberration of about twenty-two thousand afar amid Earth's breadth on any specific date in two alternating years", and that appropriately they should not be beneath the aforementioned access according to astrology. Over a 40-year aeon there would be a aberration greater than 780,000 miles.[138]
Cultural impact
   
Mars, the Bringer of War
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Mars, performed by the US Air Force Band
Venus, the Bringer of Peace
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Venus, performed by the US Air Force Band
Mercury, the Winged Messenger
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Mercury, performed by the US Air Force Band
Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
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Jupiter, performed by the US Air Force Band
Uranus, the Magician
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Uranus, performed by the US Air Force Band
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Western backroom and society

In the West, political leaders accept sometimes consulted astrologers. For example, the British intelligence bureau MI5 active Louis de Wohl as an astrologer afterwards claims alike that Adolf Hitler acclimated astrometry to time his actions. The War Office was "...interested to apperceive what Hitler's own astrologers would be cogent him from anniversary to week."[139] In fact, de Wohl's predictions were so inaccurate that he was anon labelled a "complete charlatan," and afterwards affirmation showed that Hitler brash astrometry "complete nonsense."[140] Afterwards John Hinckley's attempted assassination of US President Ronald Reagan, aboriginal adult Nancy Reagan commissioned astrologer Joan Quigley to act as the abstruse White Abode astrologer. However, Quigley's role assured in 1988 back it became accessible through the memoirs of above arch of staff, Donald Regan.[141]

There was a bang in absorption in astrometry in the backward 1960s. The sociologist Marcello Truzzi declared three levels of captivation of "Astrology-believers" to annual for its active acceptance in the face of accurate discrediting. He begin that best astrology-believers did not affirmation it was a accurate annual with predictive power. Instead, those apparently involved, alive "next to nothing" about astrology's 'mechanics', apprehend bi-weekly astrometry columns, and could annual from "tension-management of anxieties" and "a cerebral belief-system that transcends science."[142] Those at the additional akin usually had their horoscopes casting and approved admonition and predictions. They were abundant adolescent than those at the aboriginal level, and could annual from adeptness of the accent of astrometry and the consistent adeptness to accord to a articular and absolute group. Those at the third akin were awful complex and usually casting horoscopes for themselves. Astrometry provided this baby boyhood of astrology-believers with a "meaningful appearance of their cosmos and [gave] them an compassionate of their abode in it."[b] This third accumulation took astrometry seriously, possibly as a angelic canopy[further annual needed], admitting the added two groups took it playfully and irreverently.[142]

In 1953, the sociologist Theodor W. Adorno conducted a abstraction of the astrometry cavalcade of a Los Angeles bi-weekly as allotment of a activity analytical accumulation adeptness in backer society.[143]:326 Adorno believed that accepted astrology, as a device, consistently leads to statements that encouraged conformity—and that astrologers who go adjoin conformity, by black achievement at assignment etc., accident accident their jobs.[143]:327 Adorno assured that astrometry is a all-embracing appearance of analytical irrationalism, breadth individuals are cautiously led—through adulation and ambiguous generalisations—to accept that the columnist of the cavalcade is acclamation them directly.[144] Adorno drew a alongside with the byword opium of the people, by Karl Marx, by commenting, "occultism is the metaphysic of the dopes."[143]:329

A 2005 Gallup poll and a 2009 analysis by the Pew Assay Center appear that 25% of US adults accept in astrology.[145][146] According to abstracts appear in the National Science Foundation's 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators study, "Fewer Americans abandoned astrometry in 2012 than in contempo years."[147] The NSF abstraction acclaimed that in 2012, "slightly added than bisected of Americans said that astrometry was 'not at all scientific,' admitting about two-thirds gave this acknowledgment in 2010. The commensurable allotment has not been this low back 1983."[147]
India and Japan
Birth (in blue) and afterlife (in red) ante of Japan back 1950, with the abrupt bead in births during hinoeuma year (1966)

In India, there is a accepted and boundless acceptance in astrology. It is frequently acclimated for circadian life, decidedly in affairs apropos alliance and career, and makes all-encompassing use of electional, horary and karmic astrology.[148][149] Indian backroom accept additionally been afflicted by astrology.[150] It is still brash a annex of the Vedanga.[151][152] In 2001, Indian scientists and politicians debated and critiqued a angle to use accompaniment money to armamentarium assay into astrology,[153] consistent in permission for Indian universities to action courses in Vedic astrology.[154]

On February 2011, the Bombay High Cloister reaffirmed astrology's continuing in India back it absolved a case that challenged its cachet as a science.[155]

In Japan, able acceptance in astrometry has led to affecting changes in the abundance amount and the cardinal of abortions in the years of Fire Horse. Adherents accept that women built-in in hinoeuma years are unmarriageable and accompany bad luck to their ancestor or husband. In 1966, the cardinal of babies built-in in Japan alone by over 25% as parents approved to abstain the stigma of accepting a babe built-in in the hinoeuma year.[156][157]
Literature and music
Title folio of John Lyly's abstruse play, The Woman in the Moon, 1597

The fourteenth-century English poets John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer both referred to astrometry in their works, including Gower's Confessio Amantis and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.[158] Chaucer commented absolutely on astrometry in his Altercation on the Astrolabe, demonstrating claimed adeptness of one area, administrative astrology, with an annual of how to acquisition the antecedent or ascendance sign.[159]

In the fifteenth century, references to astrology, such as with similes, became "a amount of course" in English literature.[158]
Title folio of Calderón de la Barca's Astrologo Fingido, Madrid, 1641

In the sixteenth century, John Lyly's 1597 play, The Woman in the Moon, is wholly motivated by astrology,[160] while Christopher Marlowe makes abstruse references in his plays Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine (both c. 1590),[160] and Sir Philip Sidney refers to astrometry at atomic four times in his affair The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (c. 1580).[160] Edmund Spenser uses astrometry both decoratively and causally in his poetry, absolute "...unmistakably an constant absorption in the art, an absorption aggregate by a ample cardinal of his contemporaries."[160] George Chapman's play, Byron's Conspiracy (1608), analogously uses astrometry as a causal apparatus in the drama.[161] William Shakespeare's attitude arise astrometry is unclear, with adverse references in plays including Baron Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and Richard II.[161] Shakespeare was accustomed with astrometry and fabricated use of his adeptness of astrometry in about every ball he wrote,[161] bold a basal acquaintance with the accountable in his bartering audience.[161] Outside theatre, the physician and abstruse Robert Fludd practised astrology, as did the dishonest doctor Simon Forman.[161] In Elizabethan England, "The accepted activity about astrometry ... [was] that it is the best advantageous of the sciences."[161]

In seventeenth aeon Spain, Lope de Vega, with a abundant adeptness of astronomy, wrote plays that badinage astrology. In his pastoral affair La Arcadia (1598), it leads to absurdity; in his novela Guzman el Bravo (1624), he concludes that the stars were fabricated for man, not man for the stars.[162] Calderón de la Barca wrote the 1641 ball Astrologo Fingido (The Pretended Astrologer); the artifice was adopted by the French author Thomas Corneille for his 1651 ball Feint Astrologue.[163]

The best acclaimed allotment of music afflicted by astrometry is the agreeable apartment The Planets. Written by the British artisan Gustav Holst (1874–1934), and aboriginal performed in 1918, the framework of The Planets is based aloft the abstruse apologue of the planets.[164] Anniversary of the seven movements of the apartment is based aloft a altered planet, admitting the movements are not in the adjustment of the planets from the Sun. The artisan Colin Matthews wrote an eighth movement advantaged Pluto, the Renewer, aboriginal performed in 2000.[165] In 1937, addition British composer, Constant Lambert, wrote a ballet on abstruse themes, alleged Horoscope.[166] In 1974, the New Zealand artisan Edwin Carr wrote The Twelve Signs: An Abstruse Entertainment for orchestra after strings.[167] Camille Paglia acknowledges astrometry as an access on her assignment of arcane criticism Sexual Personae (1990).[168]

Astrology appearance acerb in Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, almsman of the 2013 Man Booker Prize.