“So, what’s your sign?” More than just a corny pickup line, astrology in various forms, has been with mankind for a very long time. People from various countries and cultures, have often looked up to the stars for guidance. Million of people read their daily horoscopes, though most look at it as a mere form of entertainment. Other people genuinely take the art of astrology very seriously and think it is a valid medium with which to predict a person’s personality, as well as their immediate future (though most serious astrologers view magazine horoscopes as just being entertainment).
So where did it all get started? Around 3,500 years ago, the ancient Babylonians were attempting to correlate events that happened on earth (e.g. good crop yields, bad diseases) with things they noticed in the night sky. This was not the first time that this happened, either. Other ancient cultures, such as the Mayans and Aztecs, developed their own form of astrology too. Most of the astrology we see today, though, comes from India, Europe and China. All of it, though, is either deeply routed, or deeply influenced by Babylonian astrology.
Early astrologers simply correlated earthly events with celestial ones. It wasn’t until mathematical astronomy developed (which allows us to predict the movement of stars and planets), around 612-539 BC, that astrologers started to “predict” the future. It was also around this time that the “twelve” signs of the zodiac, were created. The oldest recorded horoscope dates back to April 29th 410 B.C. It comes from an old clay plate that was made for the birth of a Grecian man. The tablet is very similar to the natal horoscopes given out today. Even more similar, though, is the vague prediction given about the person. The parts of the tablet that have still survive, state:
“…things will be good for you.”
Early Babylonian astrologers were called: Chaldeans. They would set up shops in cities, and offer their services to passersby. Interestingly, it wasn’t until they did this in Greece, that the concept of free will was entered into the equation. Ancient Greeks viewed these chaldeans as jokes, and their predictions to be patently false. They refused to believe that the stars themselves dictated their actions, and that they had no free will. Because of this, astrologers adopted the belief that the stars can only show “possible pathways” through life. This turned out to be a greater boon for the chaldeans and future astrologers, than it did for the Greeks. Now astrologers had a viable excuse for why their predictions did not always come true.
Finally, we come to the most influential man in astrology: Claudius Ptolemeaus. Also known as Ptolemy, he wrote the book: Tetrabiblos. In it, Ptolemeaus attempted to consolidate all the various aspects of astrology at the time, into some sort of viable standard. Tetrabiblos is generally regarded as the modern astrological “bible,” from which all western astrology derives.
