astrology

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

88:6.5Magic was the branch off the evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gious tree which even­tu­ally bore the fruit of a sci­en­tific age. Be­lief in as­trol­ogy led to the de­vel­op­ment of as­tron­omy; be­lief in a philoso­pher’s stone led to the mas­tery of met­als, while be­lief in magic num­bers founded the sci­ence of math­e­mat­ics.

95:1.7This de­feat of the Salem gospel was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a great in­crease in the cult of Ishtar, a rit­ual which had al­ready in­vaded Pales­tine as Ash­toreth, Egypt as Isis, Greece as Aphrodite, and the north­ern tribes as As­tarte. And it was in con­nec­tion with this re­vival of the wor­ship of Ishtar that the Baby­lo­nian priests turned anew to stargaz­ing; as­trol­ogy ex­pe­ri­enced its last great Mes­o­po­ta­mian re­vival, for­tunetelling be­came the vogue, and for cen­turies the priest­hood in­creas­ingly de­te­ri­o­rated.

87:5.9The in­ten­tion and will of the spir­its were stud­ied by means of omens, or­a­cles, and signs. And these spirit mes­sages were in­ter­preted by div­ina­tion, sooth­say­ing, magic, or­deals, and as­trol­ogy. The whole cult was a scheme de­signed to pla­cate, sat­isfy, and buy off the spir­its through this dis­guised bribery.

90:2.5The med­i­cine men put great trust in signs and omens, such as, “When you hear the sound of a rustling in the tops of the mul­berry trees, then shall you be­stir your­self.” Very early in the his­tory of the race the shamans turned their at­ten­tion to the stars. Prim­i­tive as­trol­ogy was a world-wide be­lief and prac­tice; dream in­ter­pret­ing also be­came wide­spread. All this was soon fol­lowed by the ap­pear­ance of those tem­per­a­men­tal shamanesses who pro­fessed to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with the spir­its of the dead.

121:5.53. As­trol­ogy. This pseudo sci­ence of Baby­lon de­vel­oped into a re­li­gion through­out the Greco-Ro­man Em­pire. Even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury man has not been fully de­liv­ered from this su­per­sti­tious be­lief.

150:3.2Late that evening Je­sus gave the united group a mem­o­rable talk on “Magic and Su­per­sti­tion.” In those days the ap­pear­ance of a bright and sup­pos­edly new star was re­garded as a to­ken in­di­cat­ing that a great man had been born on earth. Such a star hav­ing then re­cently been ob­served, An­drew asked Je­sus if these be­liefs were well founded. In the long an­swer to An­drew’s ques­tion the Mas­ter en­tered upon a thor­ough­go­ing dis­cus­sion of the whole sub­ject of hu­man su­per­sti­tion. The state­ment which Je­sus made at this time may be sum­ma­rized in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

150:3.31. The courses of the stars in the heav­ens have noth­ing what­ever to do with the events of hu­man life on earth. As­tron­omy is a proper pur­suit of sci­ence, but as­trol­ogy is a mass of su­per­sti­tious er­ror which has no place in the gospel of the king­dom.

83:4.4Child­less­ness was greatly dreaded, and since bar­ren­ness was at­tributed to spirit machi­na­tions, ef­forts to in­sure fe­cun­dity also led to the as­so­ci­a­tion of mar­riage with cer­tain mag­i­cal or re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als. And in this ef­fort to in­sure a happy and fer­tile mar­riage, many charms were em­ployed; even the as­trologers were con­sulted to as­cer­tain the birth stars of the con­tract­ing par­ties. At one time the hu­man sac­ri­fice was a reg­u­lar fea­ture of all wed­dings among well-to-do peo­ple.

88:6.7Grad­u­ally sci­ence is re­mov­ing the gam­bling el­e­ment from life. But if mod­ern meth­ods of ed­u­ca­tion should fail, there would be an al­most im­me­di­ate re­ver­sion to the prim­i­tive be­liefs in magic. These su­per­sti­tions still linger in the minds of many so-called civ­i­lized peo­ple. Lan­guage con­tains many fos­sils which tes­tify that the race has long been steeped in mag­i­cal su­per­sti­tion, such words as spell­bound, ill-starred, pos­ses­sions, in­spi­ra­tion, spirit away, in­ge­nu­ity, en­tranc­ing, thun­der­struck, and as­ton­ished. And in­tel­li­gent hu­man be­ings still be­lieve in good luck, the evil eye, and as­trol­ogy.

90:2.7Again and again did the Cae­sars ban­ish the as­trologers, but they in­vari­ably re­turned be­cause of the pop­u­lar be­lief in their pow­ers. They could not be driven out, and even in the six­teenth cen­tury af­ter Christ the di­rec­tors of Oc­ci­den­tal church and state were the pa­trons of as­trol­ogy. Thou­sands of sup­pos­edly in­tel­li­gent peo­ple still be­lieve that one may be born un­der the dom­i­na­tion of a lucky or an un­lucky star; that the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the heav­enly bod­ies de­ter­mines the out­come of var­i­ous ter­res­trial ad­ven­tures. For­tunetellers are still pa­tron­ized by the cred­u­lous.