Astrology

An ancient system of divination using the position of the planets, moon, and stars. According to astrology the celestial bodies exert forces and exhibit personalities that influence people and events below. These influences may be determined by mapping positions in the sky at various times. The origins of astrology may date to fifty thousand years ago, when Cro-Magnon people read patterns of stars in the sky and marked seasons by notching bones. It was not until about 3000 B.C. that astrology was developed into a system, first by the Chaldeans, who gazed at the heavens from their ziggurats. The ancient Chinese, c. 2000 B.C., also practised astrology. The emperor was considered the high priest of the heavens and made sacrifices to the stars to stay in harmony with them. With the development of science in the seventeenth century, astrology became relegated to superstition and the occult, but never fell out of public favour. Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung sometimes consulted the horoscopes of his patients to search for inner potentials and latent problems. He said that astrology is synchronistic; whatever is born or done has the quality of that moment in time. In the East modern astrology is used chiefly for divination. In the West astrology has been used increasingly in alternative forms of counselling and therapy.