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Author: William E. Burns
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
Alphabetically arranged entries cover the history of astrology from ancient Mesopotamia to the 21st century. In addition to surveying the Western tradition, the book explores Islamic, Indian, East Asian, and Mesoamerican astrology. The field of astrology is growing rapidly, as historians recognize its centrality to the intellectual life of the past and sociologists and anthropologists treat its importance in a number of modern cultures. Despite the historical and cultural significance of the subject, most reference works on astrology focus on instructional techniques and are written by astrologers with little or no interest in the history of the topic. This book instead offers an objective treatment of astrology across world history from ancient Mesopotamia to the present. The book provides alphabetically arranged entries by expert contributors writing on such topics as horoscopes, court astrologers, Renaissance astrology, and comets. While it considers the Western tradition, it also treats Islamic, Indian, East Asian, and Mesoamerican astrology. In doing so, it explores the role of astrology in shaping science, literature, religion, art, and other defining cultural traditions. Sidebars offer excerpts from various historical texts, while entries provide suggestions for further reading.
Author: William E. Burns
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 412
Get Book Here
Book Description
Alphabetically arranged entries cover the history of astrology from ancient Mesopotamia to the 21st century. In addition to surveying the Western tradition, the book explores Islamic, Indian, East Asian, and Mesoamerican astrology. The field of astrology is growing rapidly, as historians recognize its centrality to the intellectual life of the past and sociologists and anthropologists treat its importance in a number of modern cultures. Despite the historical and cultural significance of the subject, most reference works on astrology focus on instructional techniques and are written by astrologers with little or no interest in the history of the topic. This book instead offers an objective treatment of astrology across world history from ancient Mesopotamia to the present. The book provides alphabetically arranged entries by expert contributors writing on such topics as horoscopes, court astrologers, Renaissance astrology, and comets. While it considers the Western tradition, it also treats Islamic, Indian, East Asian, and Mesoamerican astrology. In doing so, it explores the role of astrology in shaping science, literature, religion, art, and other defining cultural traditions. Sidebars offer excerpts from various historical texts, while entries provide suggestions for further reading.
Author: Alexander Boxer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039363485X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
An illuminating look at the surprising history and science of astrology, civilization’s first system of algorithms, from Babylon to the present day. Humans are pattern-matching creatures, and astrology is the universe’s grandest pattern-matching game. In this refreshing work of history and analysis, data scientist Alexander Boxer examines classical texts on astrology to expose its underlying scientific and mathematical framework. Astrology, he argues, was the ancient world’s most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a monumental data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of history’s most brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler. Thousands of years ago, astrologers became the first to stumble upon the powerful storytelling possibilities inherent in numerical data. To correlate the configurations of the cosmos with our day-to-day lives, astrologers relied upon a “scheme of heaven,” or horoscope, showing the precise configuration of the planets at a particular instant in time as viewed from a particular place on Earth. Although recognized as pseudoscience today, horoscopes were once considered a cutting-edge scientific tool. Boxer teaches us how to read these esoteric charts—and appreciate the complex astronomical calculations needed to generate them—by diagramming how the heavens appeared at important moments in astrology’s history, from the assassination of Julius Caesar as viewed from Rome to the Apollo 11 lunar landing as seen from the surface of the Moon. He then puts these horoscopes to the test using modern data sets and statistical science, arguing that today’s data scientists do work similar to astrologers of yore. By looking back at the algorithms of ancient astrology, he suggests, we can better recognize the patterns that are timeless characteristics of our own pattern-matching tendencies. At once critical, rigorous, and far ranging, A Scheme of Heaven recontextualizes astrology as a vast, technological project—spanning continents and centuries—that foreshadowed our data-driven world today.
Author: Roger Beck
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470775378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
A Brief History of Ancient Astrology explores the theory and practice of astrology from Babylon to Ancient Greece and Rome and its cultural and political impact on ancient societies. Discusses the union between early astrology and astronomy, in contrast to the modern dichotomy between science and superstition. Explains the ancient understanding of the zodiac and its twelve signs, the seven planets, and the fixed circle of 'places' against which the signs and planets revolve. Demonstrates how to construct and interpret a horoscope in the ancient manner, using original ancient horoscopes and handbooks. Considers the relevance of ancient astrology today.
Author: Laura Ackerman Smoller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887321
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
Although astrology was viewed with suspicion by the medieval church, it became a major area of inquiry for the renowned cardinal and scholar Pierre d'Ailly, whose astrological and apocalyptic writings had a significant influence on Christopher Columbus. D'Ailly's writings on the stars, the focus of this book, clearly illustrate the complex relationships among astrology, science, and Christian thinking in the late Middle Ages. Through an examination of his letters, sermons, and philosophical, astrological, and theological treatises, Laura Ackerman Smoller reveals astrology's appeal as a scientific means to interpret history and prophecy, and not merely as a magical way to forecast and manipulate one's own fate. At the same time, she shows how d'Ailly dealt with delicate problems--such as free will and God's omnipotence--in elevating astrology to a compelling, but not always consistent, "natural theology." The French cardinal's most intriguing prediction was for the advent of Antichrist in 1789, one that stemmed from his deep concern over the Great Schism (1378-1414). Smoller maintains that the division in the church led d'Ailly to fear the imminence of the apocalypse, and that he eventually turned to astrology to quell his apocalyptic fears, thereby gaining confidence that a church council could heal the Schism. In elucidating the place of astrology in medieval society, this book also affords a personal glimpse of a man facing a profound crisis. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: James H. Holden
Publisher: American Federation of Astr
ISBN: 0866904638
Category : Astrology
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
This thoroughly researched book is a history of the development of Western horoscopic astrology from its origin among the Babylonians and its subsequent creation in its present form by the Alexandrians down to modern times. Special attention is given to background history and to the working conditions and techniques used by astrologers during the last two thousand years. Numerous footnotes provide additional information and bibliographic references. A separate bibliography lists reference sources of particular importance. Two comprehensive indices containing more than 2,800 individual entries enable the reader to locate persons, publishers, topics, and book and periodical titles that are mentioned in the history. The book also contains discussions of several questions and topics relating to astrology. James Herschel Holden is Research Director of the American Federation of Astrologers and has been especially interested in the history of astrology.
Author: Monica Azzolini
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387
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Book Description
The Duke and the Stars explores science and medicine as studied and practiced in fifteenth-century Italy, including how astrology was taught in relation to astronomy. It illustrates how the “predictive art” of astrology was often a critical, secretive source of information for Italian Renaissance rulers, particularly in times of crisis.
Author: S. J. Tester
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 9780851152554
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Superb general account.' Times Literary Supplement The story of the history of Western astrology begins with the philosophers of Greece in the 5th century BC. To the magic and stargazing of Egypt the Greeks added numerology, geometryand rational thought. The philosophy of Plato and later of the Stoics made astrology respectable, and by the time Ptolemy wrote his textbook the Tetrabiblos, in the second century AD, the main lines of astrological practice as it is known today had already been laid down. In future centuries astrology shifted to Islam only to return to the West in medieval times where it flourished until the shift of ideas during the Renaissance.
Author: Nicholas Campion
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441107495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
Astrology is a major feature of contemporary popular culture. Recent research indicates that 99% of adults in the modern west know their birth sign. In the modern west astrology thrives as part of our culture despite being a pre-Christian, pre-scientific world-view. Medieval and Renaissance Europe marked the high water mark for astrology. It was a subject of high theological speculation, was used to advise kings and popes, and to arrange any activity from the beginning of battles to the most auspicious time to have one's hair cut. Nicholas Campion examines the foundation of modern astrology in the medieval and Renaissance worlds. Spanning the period between the collapse of classical astrology in the fifth century and the rise of popular astrology on the web in the twentieth, Campion challenges the historical convention that astrology flourished only between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. Concluding with a discussion of astrology's popularity and appeal in the twenty-first century, Campion asks whether it should be seen as an integral part of modernity or as an element of the post-modern world.
Author: Robert Powell
Publisher: Sophia Academic Press
ISBN: 9781597311526
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
The zodiac was first clearly defined by the Babylonians some 2500 years ago, but until recently the basis of this original definition remained unknown. This zodiac of the Babylonians, known as the sidereal zodiac because it is specified in direct relation to the stars (Latin sideris, 'starry'), was used for centuries throughout the ancient world, all the way to India, and must be distinguished from the tropical zodiac in widespread use by astrologers in the West today, which was introduced only in the middle of the second century A.D. by the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy. Such was Ptolemy's influence, however, that the tropical zodiac gained prominence and, except for its survival (in a variant form) in India, knowledge of the sidereal zodiac was lost. In this thrilling study of the history of the zodiac, first submitted in 2004 as his Ph.D. thesis, Robert Powell rescues the the sidereal zodiac from the dusts of time, tracing it back to the Babylonians in the sixth/fifth centuries B.C. The implications of this discovery-among them the restitution of the sideral zodiac to its rightful place at the heart of astrology-are immense, they key point being that the signs of the sidereal zodiac, each thirty degrees long, coincide closely with the twelve astronomical constellations of the same name, whereas the signs of the tropical zodiac, since they are defined in relation to the vernal point, now have no direct relationship to the corresponding zodiacal constellations, owing to the precession of the equinoxes.This revolutionary history of the zodiac includes chapters on the Egyptian decans and the Hindu nakshatras, showing how these sidereal divisions, which originated in Egypt and India, are related to the original Babylonian zodiac. It also sheds light on the controversy surrounding the 'zodiac question' (tropical vs. sidereal), illuminating the history of the tropical zodiac-showing that originally it was not a zodiac at all, but a calendar for describing the course of the seasons! This book, the fruit of thirty years of research, is intended not only for scholars but for general readers as well, and offers the clearest and most comprehensive study of the history of the zodiac yet published.
Author: Ada Aubin
Publisher: St. Martin's Essentials
ISBN: 1250766788
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 171
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Book Description
Ada Aubin and June Rifkin's The Complete Book of Astrology is an easy-to-use guide to astrology—with resources and worksheets—revised and updated for the 21st century. An easy-to-use guide to astrology that takes the user beyond the rudimentary basics of the sun sign and helps them gain insight into their personality and potential. There is much more to Astrology than simply the sun sign. Both a science and an art form, astrology is as old as recorded human history. It is the "science of possibilities," showing the influence that the position and interaction of the planets at the time of birth have on a person's life, character, and innate potential. The Complete Book of Astrology is a concise, easy-to-use guide that introduces and explores the sun signs, as well as ascendants, planets, houses, aspects, transits, and other advanced concepts that educate and enlighten. With worksheets, and useful resources to help a user create their personal chart, The Complete Book of Astrology provides the knowledge and tools for readers who want to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and those around them.
