History of Astrology

The oldest astrological documents are of the year 700 BC, which comes from the Babylonian and Chaldeans. For Egyptians, the astrological knowledge was part of their religion. The oldest sample of the drafting of an astral birth chart comes from the Egyptian Pharaoh Nectanebo in the year 358 BC. Some of the most famous people who were dedicated to the study of astrology are: Hippocrates (460 – 359 BC), father of today’s medicine, who used the astrological system for his diagnoses in medicine, Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), Manilus (48 BC – 20 AD), who wrote five books on the movement of celestial bodies and on the properties of the zodiacal signs, Francis Bacon (1546 – 1626); Galileo Galilei (1546 – 1601), who built the first telescope of history and confirmed the controversial theory of Copernicus which states that the Earth was not the center of the universe; Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who was convinced that the events could be predicted by astrology.

Astrology fell in a time of darkness during 1600 to 1800 due to numerous factors that contributed to its discredit. Astronomy was transformed into a science sharpening its separation from astrology. The Catholic Church and parliaments openly proclaimed that astrology was a superstitious practice. It was subjected to trial by accusing astrologers of heretics and condemning them to remain in prison or were sentenced to death even if people of the stature of John Dryden and Isaac Newton were ruling in its favor.

In the early nineteenth century, astrology experienced a revival under the auspices of Frederic Leo (better known as Alan Leo). Astrology acquired a new image which praises the human nature and it stressed that a man can have control over his destiny or be at the mercy of it. Alan Leo astrology took away the value of superstition and witchcraft that surrounded it and raised its art-science status to be more ethical.