Astrology / History

Ancient Greek

    
    Plato's pupil Eudoxus (3rd c B.C.) was the first to definitely state that the planets moved in more than one sphere in order to account for their irregular motion. He claimed a total of 26 spheres to explain the motion of the planets, and one sphere for the fixed stars, making a total of 27. The reluctance of the Pythagoreans and Platonists to attribute motion to the Earth was to lead them to ever more bizarre conceptions of planetary movement. Plato's most important pupil was Aristotle (384-323 B.C.) who lived to see the end of the City-State system and the conquest of Greece, as well as much of Asia, by Alexander the Great of Macedon. These were the conquests which brought east and west face to face, and it has even been noted that there are similarities between Aristotle's hierarchical Universe and Indian and Chinese philosophy. Aristotle tended to be rather sceptical, dismissing many of Plato's mythological allegories, but he adhered to the essence of Plato's cosmology. He maintained the geocentric universe with perfect cyclical planetary motion, and continued the work of Eudoxus, creating an even more complicated pattern of 54 spheres to account for the planetary orbits. Aristotle also denied that the planets were divine intelligences, and placed the Creator outside the universe, beyond the sphere of the fixed stars. The effect of this was twofold. It turned the Universe into a soulless machine from the living organism of Plato, and it made the planets channels of divine will rather than direct expressions of that will. This was important in Medieaval Europe for the Aristotelian system seemed to Christians to allow more room for free will than the Platonic. To Aristotelians the divine will originated in the realm beyond the fixed stars, and then gradually filtered down through the planetary spheres, finally arriving at the Earth.
    
    Aristotle also argued in favour of observation as the basis for understanding of the Universe, in contrast to the mystical approach of the Platonists, and his attitude provided philosophical authority for those in early Mediaeval Europe, such as Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas who began the search for natural causes in astronomy. However, he also thought that the nature of an object was contained in its form and this placed him within the mainstream of mystical Pythagorean geometry. As a result of this his work, particularly his complicated system of planetary spheres, contributed more to those who insisted, on philosophical grounds, that the Earth must be immovable, and must be at the absolute centre of the Universe.
    
    The importance of the planetary spirits as deities was stated even more clearly by the new philosophy of Stoicism than by the Platonists. Stoicism was founded by Zeno, a Syrian who came to Athens in 311 B.C., and proceeded to teach a philosophy which was Greek in content, but in tone reflected the dogmatic religious attitude which was simultaneously giving rise to Judaism in Palestine. Apart from his description of the heavenly bodies as manifestations of the divine, Zeno's teaching had two important results for astrology. Firstly he asserted more clearly than before the absolutely cyclical nature of the Universe in terms so strong that the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, himself a Stoic, believed that in every cycle of existence world history was repeated exactly and down to the smallest detail. It was the adoption of this cyclical fatalism by many of the intellectuals at Rome which provided respectability for astrology in the Roman Empire. Secondly the Stoics took over the idea of a world state with the brotherhood of man, a popular notion stimulated by the conquests of Alexander. However, their idea of the brotherhood of man was associated with individuals rather than kings, and the essence of Stoic religion was to make the individual lord of his own fate, perhaps to assert his freedom from the ever recurring cyclical universe. It is possible that this Stoic philosophy of individualism which required that people develop and improve themselves, both reflected and stimulated the change in consciousness which brought the shift from mundane to natal astrology. It would appear to be central to Stoic beliefs that individuals have their nativities cast in order to understand, and therefore free themselves from, the rule of Fate.

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