Astrology / History

Ancient Greek

    
    The second main Pythagorean after Philolaus was Empedocles (c 495 - 430 B.C.), who came from Agrigentum in Sicily. Previous philosophers had discussed the role of individual elements: fire, air or water, as the basis of the physical universe, but it was Empedodes who evolved the idea that all things in the Universe are composed of four elements fire, earth, air and water. Empedocles, who like Pythagoras became a teacher with a band of followers, taught that the elements were in a permanent state of flux and that all things in the physical universe (the realm of Becoming), including human personality, were shaped by them. Empedocles was not an astrologer, for astrology was not yet practised in Greece, but the importance of his theory to astrology up to the present day can hardly be over-estimated.
    
    The major application of Empedoclean theory was made by Hippocrates (born c 460 B.C.), who like Empedocles studied at the Grest medical school on the Island of Cos. Hippocrates related the four elements to the four humours (physical conditjons) of the human body and so laid the foundations for the development of medical astrology. The Hippocratic concept that it is the patient that should be treated rather than the disease, has been revived in modern times in homeopathy and other "holistic" methods of healing. Hippocrates' name has lived on today in the "Hippocratic" oath which all medical men take as the basis of their professional ethics.
    
    The progress of scientific astronomy reached a successful point in the life of Meton who in around 432/422 B.C. produced precise measurements of the Summer solstice and the 19 year eclipse cycle, named after him as the "metonic" cycle.
    
    Greek philosophy found its next great figure in the person of Plato (c 428-348 B.C.). Plato was not a member of the Pythagorean brotherhood, but he associated himself with the Pythagoreans, and combined their thought with that of the other two main schools, the lonian and the Eleatic, which he learnt from his teacher Socrates. If Pythagoras laid the foundations, then Plato is the main builder of astrological theory. Even though he was, like his predecessors, not an astrologer, he was aware of the use of astrology for divination, possibly through contacts with visiting Babylonians in Athens. Plato's dismissal of science was to have an enormous impact on the future development of astronomy and astrology, for most astronomers until the 17th century totally accepted his philosophy. This assumed a planetary system which denied any possibility of heliocentricity and therefore ruled out any but the most complex explanations of planetary motion. This was to be particularly true of the Arab astonomers of the 9th to 12th centuries who had all the evidence necessary to formulate a sun-centered model of planetary motion but preferred to stay with geocentricity because of its symbolic meaning. Astrology itself, as a symbolic model of the Universe, has always been closely identified with Platonism, the philosophy of Plato, and historically Platonists have always been the most ardent supporters of astrology. This was very much the case in Medieaval Europe when prevailing philosophies tended to be identified with either Aristotle or Plato. Essentially the Platonist attitude was first to create a symbolic model of the Planetary system in which spirit was more important than matter, and then to make observed natural phenomena, such as irregular planetary orbits, fit in with their preconceived system.

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