Astrology, Part II

by Siusaidh Ceanadach

Man’s preoccupation with the skies began long before the invention of writing, we can only guess as to the extent of early astronomical knowledge. As long as 6,000 years ago Chaldean Priests used watchtowers to make maps of the sky. Clay tablets dating from 3,800BCE record with extraordinary accuracy the motion of the Sun and the Moon.

Graham Hancock has made TV programmes written books about ancient temples in Cambodia, in South America and other places in the world, which are built in alignment with star constellations. These temples are dated to 10,500BCE. However his findings are made with the aid of modern technology, software that can calculate the night sky as far back as 10,500BCE. His findings are controversial and not all accept them. I see personally evidence of a link with the natural calendar of the years turning and the buildings.

The ancients were convinced that there was a connection between Divinity and the Stars. We know that the Chaldeans regulated their lives with the aid of the heavens and this affected not only their practical life. Parkers’ Compleat Astrologer states that “a star is an ancient Sumerian symbol for divinity.” The Sumerians are thought to be the real founders of astrology.

The three wise men from the biblical story of the birth of Christ were in the original text called ‘Magi’: translated = Astrologers. It is written that they came from the East, i.e. the area we know as Chaldea. Therefore it can be safely assumed that the practise of Astrology was still strong at the beginning of the Christian Calendar.

Stonehenge, dated appox; 2,500BCE is aligned to the Summer Solstice and again its date is also in dispute, although recent carbon datings tend to confirm this date. Newgrange in Ireland is aligned with the midwinter solstice and is a burial mound. This has three chambers, two of which have large shallow bowls for ashes. This to me shows a strong link with a belief in an afterlife, which is governed by the Sun’s movements.

Time Lines of the Ancient Ones

Recent studies of Ice Age bone markings suggest that men were aware of lunar periodicity as for back as 32,000 years ago. During the 7th Century BCE the Chaldeans made the first tables of planetary movements, called ephemeredes; this was in the time of the Assyrian King Assurbanipal in the mid-7th Century BCE. Ancient Egyptian star charts date to 4,200BCE and right up to three hundred years ago astronomy and astrology was an identical subject.

The first modern astrogical textbook, The Tetrabiblos, is attributed to the great astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy, 150–180CE.

Under the Greeks, the planets, houses and signs of the Zodiac were rationalized. By the time Ptolemy was plotting his universe he had seven planets to deal with. (Parker, Early Maps of the Universe.)

In my previous article about astrology I made mention of Mercury being a possible indicator of a bisexual nature. Having had some feedback about these things I should like to add this: Mercury, being the ruler of Gemini, the twins, echoes a Gemini trait where communication, mental and physical is the keywords. These are part of the Greek rationalisation of meanings. My own interpretation is that at times this can render a bisexual nature, it certainly denotes a double of some aspect of the personality, if the rest of the a chart gives evidence of this.

In support of my statement of an earlier Zodiac than the Greeks, Parkers book gives a picture of the lid of a sarcophagus from the late Egyptian period. These are the Zodiac, but as the ancient Chaldeans knew it, namely, “the road of life”. Later the Greeks formalised the ancient Chaldeans’ findings.

The writer and astrologer Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria (120–180CE) catalogued three hundred new stars and explained the refraction of light. Book One of the Tetrabiblos asserts his beliefs of the physical effects of the planets.

Bibliography.

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