The Fated Sky: Astrology in HistorySimon and Schuster, 8. nov. 2005 - 384 sider In a horoscope he cast in 1647 for Charles I, William Lilly, a noted English astrologer, made the following judgment: "Luna is with Antares, a violent fixed star, which is said to denote violent death, and Mars is approaching Caput Algol, which is said to denote beheading." Two years later the king's head fell on the block. "Astrology must be right," wrote the American astrologer Evangeline Adams, a claimed descendant of President John Quincy Adams, in a challenge to skeptics in 1929. "There can be no appeal from the Infinite." The Fated Sky explores both the history of astrology and the controversial subject of its influence in history. It is the first serious book to fully engage astrology in this way. Astrology is the oldest of the occult sciences. It is also the origin of science itself. Astronomy, mathematics, and other disciplines arose in part to make possible the calculations necessary in casting horoscopes. For five thousand years, from the ancient Near East to the modern world, the influence of the stars has been viewed as shaping the course and destiny of human affairs. According to recent polls, at least 30 percent of the American public believes in astrology, though, as Bobrick reveals, modern astrology is also utterly different from the doctrine of the stars that won the respect and allegiance of the greatest thinkers, scientists, and writers -- Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Arab, and Persian -- of an earlier day. Statesmen, popes, and kings once embraced it, and no less a figure than St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian, thought it not incompatible with Christian faith. There are some two hundred astrological allusions in Shakespeare's plays, and not one of their astrological predictions goes unfulfilled. The great astronomers of the scientific revolution -- Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler -- were adherents. Isaac Newton's appetite for mathematics was first whetted by an astrological text. In more recent times, prominent figures such as Churchill, de Gaulle, and Reagan have consulted astrologers and sometimes heeded their advice. Today universities as diverse as Oxford in England and the University of Zaragoza in Spain offer courses in the subject, fulfilling Carl Jung's prediction decades ago that astrology would again become the subject of serious discourse. Whether astrology actually has the powers that have been ascribed to it is, of course, open to debate. But there is no doubt that it maintains an unshakeable hold on the human mind. In The Fated Sky, Benson Bobrick has written an absolutely captivating and comprehensive account of this engrossing subject and its enduring influence on history and the history of ideas. |
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Side 9
... Moon) was revered; the rites of Leo in the Bacchic and Dionysiac orgies of the Greeks,” and so on. The ecclesiastical calendars of all known religions are also linked astrologically with the major phases of the Sun and Moon. Passover ...
... Moon) was revered; the rites of Leo in the Bacchic and Dionysiac orgies of the Greeks,” and so on. The ecclesiastical calendars of all known religions are also linked astrologically with the major phases of the Sun and Moon. Passover ...
Side 10
... Moon) according to which each day was ruled by one of the seven planetary gods. Each hour of each day was also so ruled, hence the cycle of planetary hours. Following Egyptian practice, there were twenty-four hours in a day, but before ...
... Moon) according to which each day was ruled by one of the seven planetary gods. Each hour of each day was also so ruled, hence the cycle of planetary hours. Following Egyptian practice, there were twenty-four hours in a day, but before ...
Side 11
... Moon, Vulcan, Athena, and Jupiter. Mercury is not mentioned by Homer, but Iris, the rainbow goddess, is his female form. As a messenger, she acts with strict neutrality, but “every scene on earth is a reflex, outcome, or willed event of ...
... Moon, Vulcan, Athena, and Jupiter. Mercury is not mentioned by Homer, but Iris, the rainbow goddess, is his female form. As a messenger, she acts with strict neutrality, but “every scene on earth is a reflex, outcome, or willed event of ...
Side 16
... Moon as a crescent, and Venus as an eight-pointed star. A large collection of cuneiform tablets, known as En ̄uma Anu Enlil, survive from the ancient archives of Nineveh and include many observations made before Assurbanipal's reign ...
... Moon as a crescent, and Venus as an eight-pointed star. A large collection of cuneiform tablets, known as En ̄uma Anu Enlil, survive from the ancient archives of Nineveh and include many observations made before Assurbanipal's reign ...
Side 17
... Moon. Early tablets therefore referred to the “stars in the path of the Moon,” and the earliest calendars were lunar, a month lasting either from first crescent to first crescent or from full Moon to full Moon. This subsequently evolved ...
... Moon. Early tablets therefore referred to the “stars in the path of the Moon,” and the earliest calendars were lunar, a month lasting either from first crescent to first crescent or from full Moon to full Moon. This subsequently evolved ...
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Almindelige termer og sætninger
Ab¯u according Alan Leo almanac ancient Aquarius Arab Aries ascendant Ashmole aspect astrol astrology astronomy Baghdad birth born Brahe Capricorn Cardano cast celestial celestial longitude century chart Christ Christian Church comet conjunction constellations course court cusp death Decline of Magic degrees divine Domitian Dragon’s Earth eclipse Emperor exaltation example fate fixed star Forman Gemini Greek Haly Abenragel heavens History History of Astrology Hitler horary horoscope Ibid John Jupiter Kepler king king’s later learned Libra Lilly Lilly’s London lord lunar malefics Mars mathematics medical astrology Mercury Midheaven modern Moon mundane astrology natal natal chart native nature opposition Pisces planetary planets predicted prince Ptolemy reign Renaissance Roman Rome royal ruled ruler Sagittarius Saturn Scorpio seemed Sepharial Shakespeare’s signified solar square Sun and Moon Sun’s Taurus Thomas thought tion took trologer Uranus Venus Virgo wrote zodiac
Populære passager
Side 180 - at the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced
Side 180 - when the planets, In evil mixture, to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents! what mutiny! What raging of the seas, shaking of earth! Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture!
Side 181 - My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Put! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing
Side 160 - in the Merchant of Venice: Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims: Such harmony is in immortal souls.
Side 76 - stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him . . . And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way. This narrative
Side 179 - Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night / Comets, importing change of time and states / Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky / And with them scourge the bad revolting stars / That have consented unto Henry's death!
Side 184 - Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, / Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky / Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull / Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
Side 180 - fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced
Side 181 - planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star.