The Arabic Acceleration of Astrology

The Arabic Acceleration of Astrology

[ Map ] [ Figures Page 2 ] [ Figures Page 3 ] [ Figures Page 4 ] [ Figures Page 5 ] [ Chronology ] [ Fate VS Free Will ] [ Plato on Astrocartography ] [ Did The Greeks Invent Astrology? ] [ Arguments Against The Astrologers ] [ Art Evolution in Greece and Rome ] [ The Arabic Acceleration of Astrology ] [ On Marsilio Ficino ] [ The Decline of Astrology and The Christian Cult ] [ Mesoamerican Astrology ]

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Astrology Information ] [ Astrology Information - Links ] smbook.jpg (2959 bytes) Order "The Integrated Astrological Guide" Order Xango

The Preservation and Acceleration of Astrology in the Arabic World

Edmond H. Wollmann

Kepler College: Astrology in Medieval Civilizations

Lee Lehman advising

Second Term, January 3, 2001

Modern astrological fundamentals came down to us via the Hermeticism and Neoplatonism of the Renaissance; the continued and refined astral religion of the Babylonians. (1) The Greeks were the first to refine that astral religion, with Greek geometry and concepts of realism based on the confidence in reason. This stems from an appreciation of the physical world and its mechanics as indicative of the will of the Gods. The rise of the Christian cult and notions of discounting that physical beauty and exploration of God through the material world and senses, brought about the steady decline of intellectual pursuits in the west, and the ages now known as "Dark". The most influential and wide ranging tenets of Christianity stemmed from the notion that the physical world and reasoning mind were at best deceptive and at worst evil. This led to the demise of astrology in that area by the period of the 5th and 6th centuries AD. (2) But it never completely died out in the more highly educated and more careful record-keeping Byzantine area. In this area the Greek works were preserved more carefully, and during the period of the 8th to 11th centuries astrology flourished in Islamic lands with the translation of Greek works beginning around 770 AD, with a revival in astrology among the Byzantines around 1000 AD. This led to the revival in western Europe in the 12th century and a rightful reinstatement of the proper validity of astrology as one of the most important arts. Not only did Arabic cultures save astrological tradition and important notions and aspects of the art, but because of the inclusion of Hermeticism, Neoplatonic and Neo-Pythagorean teachings --with the broad acceptance allowed by Islamic culture of pre-Islamic beliefs including astrology-- reason also survived, allowing them to add greatly to the astrological knowledge base. This fostered the techniques and focused applications in astrology by the Arabic world that continued and enhanced the Greek tradition of exploring the physical with reason via mechanics. Because of this perspective, the surviving Greek astrological works were saved and eventually worked on, advanced, and improved.

Stemming from this belief in reason increasing the free will and extricating us from necessity, the Arabs had a thirst for knowledge, and they became aware that the Byzantines, Persians, and Hindus knew things that they did not.(3) By inviting foreigners to Baghdad and sending emissaries to other countries to obtain books, the development of astronomical tables called zij and observatories evolved, leading to the great achievement of Ulugh Beg's (1394-1449) observatory built in Samarkland in central Asia with an astronomical table of 1000 stars.(4) The Toledan Tables prepared by Moorish astronomer al-Zarqali were translated early and became the model for the Alfonsine tables prepared under the sponsorship of Spanish king Alfonso X (1226-1284) that are an important development for western astrologers-- and their use dominated this aspect of astrology into the Renaissance. During this period astrology was again accelerating in popularity, and tables, so essential to astrologers and to the practice of it, are the evidence of that notion.

The first revision of the Almagest was accomplished by the 10th century astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (903-86) and in his Book on the Constellations of Fixed Stars he outlined improved magnitudes, along with Arabic versions and identifications. This also began the period when Ptolemaic models and their flaws were beginning to be questioned. Flaws were observed that ran against the Aristotelian Greek models of uniform motion especially the equant.(5) After rediscovering some of these works by the Islamic astrologers it was discovered that Copernicus dealt with the relatively similar problems with the Greek notions of celestial mechanics:

....when Ibn al-Shatir's work was rediscovered in modern, times, it was realized that it employed geometrical devices similar to those later used by Copernicus, who was like-wise scandalized by the Ptolemaic equant. Copernicus took the radical step of turning the Earth into a planet, but when it came to developing detailed models, many of the problems he encountered were not so very different from those confronted by his predecessors. In the Commentariolus, a preliminary sketch of his Sun-centred theory that circulated in manuscript in the early years of the sixteenth century, Copernicus used an arrangement equivalent to Ibn al-Shatir's in order to eliminate the equant and generate the intricate changes in the Earth's orbit. In the fully developed De revolutionibus (1543), Copernicus reverted to the use of eccentric orbits, but he used a model that was the Sun-centred equivalent of one developed at the observatory founded by al-Tusi at Maragha in Persia. No Latin translation of these Arabic works has been found, nor is any Latin account of them known. A Greek translation of some of al-Tusi's writings found its way to Italy in the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and Copernicus studied in Italy from 1496 to 1503 and acquired a knowledge of Greek. (see Hoskin)

As indicated, Ulugh Beg's (1394-1449) observatory falls right within this period. Despite historians need to separate the two worlds of east and west sharply not only by literal but philosophic distance, the Persian and Islamic contributions motivated by astrological and philosophical concepts of necessity and reason were very important and powerful indeed.

After Rome's fall the second civilization to rise was based on the religion of Islam emerging from Arabia with its founder Muhammad (570-632). The rise of Islamic philosophy is partly the result of --and developed with-- the translation of a considerable amount of Greek philosophical literature that had survived the Muslim conquests. In so doing the Greek astrology was revived and reinvigorated. Muslims believe that their religion is the completion of Judaism and Christianity and see the all as one, Islam meaning "surrender to Allah" (God).(6) Hence they were more tolerant of the continuance of arts that they believed allowed a full surrender in that way.

Al-kindi (796-873), known as the "philosopher of the Arabs" held a position at the court of Baghdad and died shortly after 870. He is recognized as the first Arab philosopher of importance and wrote extensively on astrology. As a prolific author, he developed ideas on the basis of Neoplatonized Aristotelianism. He argued the integrity of blending revelation and reason and that reason compliments revelation by working through with reason to a valid philosophical theology. He introduced a brilliant blending and explanation of the distinctions between the passive and active intellect, thereby blending the external world and internal world. It is said that it was he who introduced Abu Ma'shar to astrology.(7) The work during this period focused on the historical applications of astrology through conjuctions. This led to the "Golden Age" of Islamic astrology in the tenth and eleventh centuries. During this period, the transmission of Islamic astrology to western Europe appears to have been coincident with the translation of Tetrabiblos in 1138.

The inclusion of the Platonic notions of necessity and of increasing free will through reason, was saved and eventually carried over to Medieval Europe, becoming a part of the Renaissance to be carried over once more into the intellectual revolution of the 17th century.(8) Because of the notion that reason could mitigate the demands of necessity, Arabic astrological innovation developed masterfully with concepts of Solar returns, conjunction patterns of major planets and other methods of measurement out of the need to understand the will of God through them, hence, the typical modern presentism fallacy that the Arabic world of astrology was laden with deterministic perspectives of unyielding fate, are unwarranted. This defective thinking is typically the result of the lack of astrological knowledge and qualification on the part of historical researchers. The focus on technique in the Arabic world, was a mathematical extension of the Babylonian notion that destiny was negotiable. These techniques were developed with the idea of invoking talismat (9) as an extension or compliment to the judgment rendered through astrological application (nunjun). Hence astrology enhances free will, instead of denying free will by simply announcing predestined and unchanging events. (10)

This development was fostered by works such as those delineated by Mohammed Abu Ma'shar al-Balki (Albumasar).

[11] Jafar ibn Muhammad, known as Abu Ma`shar the astrologer, said to the lovers of philosophy and the higher sciences, possessors of long speculation on the wonders of the conditions of the wanderers in the entire sky: Insofar as the higher bodies signify the things existing in this world through the powers of their natural motions, then what is the advantage in being ignorant of this knowledge? [12] He would achieve this only by the knowledge of the degrees of the <zodiacal> circle, the number of the signs and their names, the quantity of the degrees of each one of them, their Lords, their dignities and their natures, and the natures of the twelve places and the planets; and by the knowledge of the northern and southern constellations, their conditions and indications. [13](14)

During the reign of Charlemagne as king of the Franks from 768-814, Abu Ma'shar (787-886) was the imposing Arabic writer of astrology who gave up Hadith, the traditions of the prophet Mohammed, in his 30s or 40s to focus on astrology, which lead to his becoming court astrologer, and professional astrologer and author of some fifty books.(15) He elaborated on return charts and other timing factors in astrology. Perhaps not the most popular in his time, but a powerful application to the modern astrologer was on The Revolutions of The Years of Nativities or what are now called Solar Returns. Copies exist in the Arabic text, a Byzantine Greek translation, and a Latin translation made from the Greek, along with another text of his in Latin Omne tempus breve est operandi (16) comprising the oldest known texts on solar returns in the west. A solar return, like the spring equinox or ingress chart,(17) is drawn for the return of the sun's longitudinal position it occupied at the time of birth (or of issue at hand):

All time for working is short, and the work of [making] the revolution of years is drawn out. It is necessary for us to copy out a few things from many, so that from the fruit of so great a work we may not slight everything negligently. And before everything else it must be stated what utility we can gain from the revolution of years or what reason there is to revolve the years, since in the ASC of the nativity there is signified everything that is going to happen to the native, as some of those who argue against revolutions have said.(18) To which the reply is that the wisdom of the philosophers testifies to the fact that the signification of human events cannot be understood from a single significator, but [rather] from two or more because the testimony of one thing in so great a matter cannot suffice; therefore, according to the authority of the greater [philosophers], we ought to revolve the years because in the revolution of years there are planets in other places in which they were not [found] in the nativity; and it is necessary that their significations in the figure be commingled with the signification of the revolution, so that both the quantity and the quality of the accident(19) may appear more openly.(20)

The profound importance of the foregoing discourse on the contributions of Al-Kindi and Abu Ma'shar are more clear to practicing astrologers than to perhaps anyone on the planet in the acceleration of consciousness into the 17th century. Because many the of modern psychological notions of developmental processes (21) that are now part of astrological processes in modern astrological counsel eventually evolved from understanding the cyclic conjunctions and ingress of bodies in astrological measurement--not to mention theories of child development cycles and stages.(22) The interesting aspect of Arabic astronomy and astrology during this period, was the fact that most of this work was theoretical and mathematical instead of observational, as barely the slightest mention is made of the supernova of 1054 that was responsible for the Crab nebula.

One of the most interesting astrologers that added to the Arabic works, was Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1167) who not only wrote books on astrology and astronomy, but commented on the Bible and astrological works with his own theories. Although the astrological work is clearly divided between the concepts of good and evil in the planetary archetypes, Abraham added much in the way of delineation and attempts to cover a wide array of possibilities for placements, houses and other delineations in "The Beginning of Wisdom".

Its share in the human body are the chest, and the breasts, and the upper bowels (stomach), and the ribs, and the spleen, and the lung, and of the ailments, everything that afflicts these organs. It also has heaviness in the eyes (impaired vision), and at 22 degrees there is a cloudy star that denotes eye ailment and defect. The whole sign indicates pruritus,(23) itch, leprosy, pock-marks, baldness and thin beard. Of People, in its share are all inferior persons, and common people, and sailors, and travelers on the road. According to Enoch it is the sign of the world.(24) According to Egyptian astrologers Satum's ailment [when found in it) is in the hips, Jupiter's is in the genitalia, Mars' is in the upper bowels (stomach), the Sun's is in the feet, Venus's is in the hands, Mercury's is in the neck and the Moon's is in the head.(25)

In "The Book of The Fundamentals of the Tables" Ibn-Ezra describes the methods of calculating cusp arrangements we now call Placidus, "invented" by Placidus 500 years later. By this time period it appears the aspects of astrology that allowed free will to be gained by the relief of necessity via reason, was coupled with the increased understanding of the physical world and the potential for astrology to enhance control over that world. This concept is the forerunner to the intellectual advance of the 17th century, accelerated by this interest by the western Europeans in the translation of the woks from the east. The Christian denial of the validity of the physical world and senses had created a psychological void for matters of logical and mechanistic investigation of the natural world. By about 1125 Adelard of Bath went to the Islamic world to learn about the culture, and was one of the first to begin filling this void by translating Arabic astrological texts into Latin. The most important being "The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology" which started the flow of astrological translations of others into Latin and the void the Christian cult had created drew in astrological and pagan acceleration that the religion itself had to accept and incorporate.

Latin Christendom in the Early Middle Ages

The centuries of cultural greatness of both Islamic and Byzantine civilizations enriched the Western world. However, neither Islam nor Byzantium made the breakthroughs in science, technology, philosophy, economics, and political thought that gave rise to the modern world. That process was the singular achievement of Europe. During the Early Middle Ages (500-1050), Latin Christendom was culturally far behind the two Eastern civilizations, but by the twelfth century it had caught up. In succeeding centuries, it produced the movements that ushered in the modern age: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution.(26)

Observe as we move into these most rapidly transforming periods ever in history, the synchronous acceleration of astrological resurgence through translation of Arabic astrological manuscripts and the influx of translated Greek works into western Europe. This combined with the psychological starvation by the Christian denial of the positive aspects of physical reality and accompanying exploration of the natural world, created a formula and climate ripe for the acceleration from the Renaissance to Industrial transformations. Every period of acceleration throughout history has contained the formula of material and spiritual integration, not separation. To the reasonable being this is incontrovertible historical evidence, that not only is astrology the liberator of dogmatic perceptions of necessity in any life or paradigm, but, as the patterns demonstrate, the essential element of the reasonable being who understands the purpose of living must be a journey of explorations that are in essence negotiation through divination.

1) Nick Campion, "The Concept of Destiny in Islamic Astrology and its Impact on Medieval European Thought", ARAM Periodical, Vol 1 no. 2, summer 1989, pages 281-89.

2) James Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, key points, page 147.

3) James Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, The Third Period, page 99.

4) Michael Hoskin, The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, Islamic Astronomy, page 58.

5) In Greek astronomy, the seat of uniform angular motion. (see Hoskin)

6) Perry, 144.

7) See Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, page 121.

8) As astrological proof of our collective awakening, Uranus is discovered in the 18th C.

9) Talismat, is the notion of drawing celestial or supernatural forces to bear on the events and momentum once a prediction of delineation had discerned that momentum.

10) This is the common understanding of the modern astrologer, who, like the ancients, uses astrology as a tool of self-awareness to allow increased free will through self-reflection and self-awareness, not as a strict science of what must happen.

11) In pre-modern astrology the primary reference of the term houses is to the signs of the Zodiac, and less commonly the divisions of the diurnal circle.

12) Decans are also known in the tradition as "faces."

13) Meaning Mode Cardinal/Fixed/Mutable, Humors or Elements and signs, and negative and positive or masculine and feminine connotations.

14) From The Abbreviation of The Introduction to Astrology of Abu Ma'shar, as edited and translated by Charles Burnette.

15) David Pingree on Abu Ma'shar in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography.

16) See Lynn Thorndike, HMES 1, p. 651 n.1.

17) An ingress chart is a horoscope drawn for the time of the sun's entrance into a new sign of the zodiac, typically the signs of equinox and solstice or Cardinal points.

18) The prevailing astrological perspective was that the progression of the life of the individual and the events that were probable, could be best indicated by the secondary progressions.

19) An occurrence or event in older astrological literature was called "accident".

20) From A History of Horoscopic Astrology, page 117.

21) See The Development of Children, Cole, Sheila R., and Michael (1993)

22) The Development of Children Cole, Sheila R., and Michael (1993).

23) An itching disease without obvious marks or rash.

24) According to Platonist philosophy Cancer was the "Gate of Men" through which souls descended from heaven into human bodies.

25) The Beginning of Wisdom, Chapter 2, page 39.

26) Western Civilization: A Brief History, "Latin Christiendom in the Early Middle Ages", Chapter 2, The Rise of Europe.

References

Burnette, Dr. Ch., Tobyn G. Cornelius, Wells V. (1997). Abu Ma'shar: The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology. Virginia: ARHAT.

Campion, Nicholas (2000). "Babylonian Astrology: Its Origin and Legacy in Europe" (Campion, extracted from Astronomies Across Cultures).

Campion, Nicholas (1989). "The Concept of Destiny in Islamic Astrology and its Impact on Medieval European Thought", ARAM Periodical, Vol 1 no. 2, summer 1989, pages 281-89.

Campion, Nicholas (2000). Astrology, History and Apocolypse. London: CPA Press.

Cole, Sheila R., and Michael (1993). The Development of Children. Second edition. New York: Scientific American Books.

Copleston, F.C. (1972). A History of Medieval Philosophy. London: University of Notre Dame Press.

Cramer, Frederick H. (1954). The Rise of Astrology in The Latin World. Baltimore Maryland: J. H. Furst Company.

Culinau, Peter. (1999). "Astrology", Encyclopedia of Religion.

Epstein, Meira B. (1998). The Beginning of Wisdom. Virginia: ARHAT

Hand, Robert. (2000). Chronology of the Astrology of the Middle East and West by Period. Virginia: ARHAT.

Holden, James Herschel (1996). A History of Horoscopic Astrology. Arizona: AFA.

Holden, James Herschel (1988). Abu 'Ali Al-Khayyat: The Judgments of Nativities. Arizona: AFA

Hoskin, Michael. (1999). The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Kuhn, Thomas S., (1985) The Copernican Revolution. London: Harvard University Press.

Perry, Marvin (1997). Western Civilization: A Brief History. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Tester, Jim. (1987). A History of Western Astrology. New Hampshire: Boydell Press.

Thomas, Keith (1971) Religion and The Decline of Magic. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing--to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts, not a select party." John Keats

Fourteenth Century Astrolabe for measuring the altitude of celestial objects

Hit Counter