I will be teaching an introductory five-week course on 'The history of astrology: from antiquity to the New Age' at Lund University (Sweden) the coming summer, and am in the process of putting together a reading list of approximately 800-1000 pages. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions for suitable books and, particularly, articles. To give some idea of the scope of the course, these are the preliminary titles of my eight three-hour lectures:

1. The roots of astrology: Mesopotamia and Hellenistic Egypt
2. Greek astrology: the foundations
3. Astrology in classical India
4. Persian astrology in Sanskrit and Arabic
5. Al-Andalus: medieval Muslim, Jewish and Christian astrology
6. From the Renaissance to the seventeenth century: astrological Protestantism and changing paradigms
7. European astrology in the nineteenth century: from science to wisdom tradition
8. Twentieth-century astrology: depth psychology and statistics

The course will be in Swedish, so the above are translations. English-language texts are fine; but not so, alas, German, French, Italian, etc.

in the process of putting together a reading list of approximately 800-1000 pages.

Hello Martin,

Wow that sounds like some bibliography! Did you literally mean pages or titles of books and articles? Will that be available on your new website at some stage?

When you say you are looking for articles do you mean just historical surveys or works that discuss aspects of astrology itself? I presume you just want to be sent suggestions by PM if you are considering this mass of sources?

I appreciate you only have a limited time to present an immense period of astrological history but your structure confuses me a bit regarding points 5 & 6.

5. Al-Andalus: medieval Muslim, Jewish and Christian astrology

You are here looking at Persian, Arabic and later derivative Latin language sources together?

6. From the Renaissance to the seventeenth century: astrological Protestantism and changing paradigms

I can see the Protestantism from German, Dutch, Scandanavian, Swiss and of course English astrology which predominates in the 17th century.

However, what about developments in Catholic Europe? From what I have read the translation of Greek texts (astrological and philosophical) from Byzantium had a major impact on renaissance astrology in Italy. From the fifteenth up to the early seveteenth century seems to have been a very creative period for astrology in Italy. Is there anything to suggest 'astrological Protestantism' as you describe it fared any better on the continent than astrology in Roman Catholic Europe? Or do you see the survival of astrology for longer in England as more the consequence of its cultural isolation from developments/trends in continental Europe?

Mark

Martin

It might be nice to include a "looking forward" kind of topic, in particular I'm thinking of Astrology in the age of computers, and how it might affect the role of the astrologer as we move further into the 21st century. So whereas now we have a proliferation of websites posting information on astrology, this is a unique moment in history, because never before was the sheer availability of information on the subject so readily at our fingertips. So whilst some sites are better than others (this one for example), there are definitely some that are pretty much nonsense, or just that particular astrologer's "brand" of astrology.
There's also the fact that the shift toward natal astrology has kind of wedged astrologers down the path of appealing more and more to egocentricities of people. Now, an astrologer might be considered accurate and 'good at their trade' not if they produce actual results, but if they flatter the client in just such a way that it ticks all their 'ego' boxes. Whilst this might have been true in the past, it might be interesting to discuss the effect that this has had on astrology itself, where astrologers are required less and less to understand the technical details (computers do that for us) but more and more on appealing to the individual's sense of flattery.

As for computers themselves, it is now possible to create charts with the click of a button and many astrologers now have no idea of how all these things actually work as they've been so far removed from the process - the computer does it all and does it quickly. Also we have the situation where we can no program computer appliations to give detailed readings, either cookbook style, or in the style of Liz Greene's psychology reports.

The point being that computers are still, relatively, very new inventions to the history of astrology and will undoubtedly transform the role of the astrologer as well as the kind of astrology required in the future.

I see my phrasing was not entirely clear; sorry about that. I didn't mean that the reading list itself should be 800-1000 pages long, but rather that the students will be supposed to read books and articles totalling around that number of pages -- for example, 2 books of 300 pages each + 200-400 pages worth of articles. And I would be happy for suggestions to be given in this forum, if nobody objects.

When you say you are looking for articles do you mean just historical surveys or works that discuss aspects of astrology itself?

They could be either, as long as they are of a scholarly nature; but preferably not too minutely technical, as this will be an introductory course rather than an experts' seminar.

5. Al-Andalus: medieval Muslim, Jewish and Christian astrology

You are here looking at Persian, Arabic and later derivative Latin language sources together?

No, the earlier Perso-Arabic and Perso-Indian material will be dealt with in lecture 4. Lecture 5 will be on the late medieval cultural and religious melting-pot in and around the Iberian Peninsula, where astrological works in Arabic were translated into Old Castilian and Latin (and Hebrew? at least works in the same style were written in Hebrew).

I can see the Protestantism from German, Dutch, Scandanavian, Swiss and of course English astrology which predominates in the 17th century.

However, what about developments in Catholic Europe?

What I mean by the shorthand expression 'astrological Protestantism' is not just astrology done by Protestant Christians, but the general Renaissance tendency to purge astrology of 'Arabic superstition' and re-create an imagined pristine astology based on one authoritative 'sacred scripture' (the Tetrabiblos). That sort of thinking was in the air. So Placidus, for instance, was what I would call an astrological Protestant!

Just off the top of my head, Chris Warnock's Selected Translations from the Picatrix comes to mind. That's an 80 page PDF, and is a rather remarkable document of some of the astrology, and how astrological magic and lunar mansions were used in the Arabic period.

Thanks for the suggestion, Paul. That sort of thing may be something to bring up towards the end of the final lecture.

Olivia wrote:Just off the top of my head, Chris Warnock's Selected Translations from the Picatrix comes to mind. That's an 80 page PDF, and is a rather remarkable document of some of the astrology, and how astrological magic and lunar mansions were used in the Arabic period.

Thank you. Is that document freely available, or sold? (Most scholarly articles will be accessible to students for free through the university library services.)

It's sold, as far as I know, but you might want to speak with Chris about it and see if a deal might be worked out as he teaches, too. I know it's a bit off the beaten track, but it's just such a marvellous piece of work - something that students might do well to be exposed to. And it does come with commentary.

Hello Martin,

Ben Dykes website is a great resource. This article for example provides a good overview of trends in early medieval astrology before the renaissance:

http://www.bendykes.com/reviews/medievalhistory.pdf

Lets not ignore Skyscipt either! There are loads of useful biographical articles and articles on the development of astrology. Plus sometimes ignored historical pieces like this by Deborah Houlding on the rise and fall of English astrology:

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/reform.html

What I mean by the shorthand expression 'astrological Protestantism' is not just astrology done by Protestant Christians, but the general Renaissance tendency to purge astrology of 'Arabic superstition' and re-create an imagined pristine astology based on one authoritative 'sacred scripture' (the Tetrabiblos). That sort of thinking was in the air. So Placidus, for instance, was what I would call an astrological Protestant!

Ah! Thats a new phrase to me. Although I have heard the word 'protestantism' used for the 19th and early 20th century academic reception of Buddhism in the West.

Mark

Congratulations on getting your course approved, Martin! Did you raise a lot of eyebrows among your administrators? Please let us know how your course goes! Lund University has a strong international reputation, so I am really impressed that you are teaching a course about astrology there.

Two books I would recommend are by Nicholas Campion, who is a British academic: The Dawn of Astrology: A cultural History of Western Astrology, Vol. 1; and A History of Western Astrology, Vol. II. Specific chapters in these books would cover many of the topics you mention. The books are written in an academic style, but still very readable for students.

I would suggest something from Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos for your Greek period. Not only is he so important to the history of astrology, but he also has credibility as an early astronomer, cartographer, and human geographer/anthropologist. (Check out his world map!) This would be a good way, also, to show how advances in the early sciences and social sciences were made in the service of astrology. Developing a grid system of latitude and longitude would be one example.

Another good book by an academic is Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology, on the very early period (Mesopotamia, &c.)

waybread wrote:Congratulations on getting your course approved, Martin! Did you raise a lot of eyebrows among your administrators? Please let us know how your course goes! Lund University has a strong international reputation, so I am really impressed that you are teaching a course about astrology there.

Thank you. The dept of religious studies at Lund is my home ground, so to speak. I haven't seen too many raised eyebrows yet.

Campion's second volume will definitely be on my list; I am less certain about the first, as much of the material covered falls outside the scope of the course by not dealing with astrology in a strict sense. I should have liked to use Kocku von Stuckrad's History of Western Astrology, but despite having been listed as 'forthcoming' for several years, it is unlikely to be out by summer (unless the publishers decide to adjust their policies on translator's fees )... I haven't decided yet whether to include extracts from original texts. One problem would be that of selection. At the moment I am mainly looking at secondary literature.

Fair enough. One problem for the earliest periods is to determine when some type of cultural astronomy (or ethnoastronomy) meets the definition of astrology and when it doesn't. Campion seems to take a broader view.

You are probably familiar with:

Kocku von Stuckrad, 2000. Jewish and Christian Astrology in Late Antiquity ? A New Approach. Numen 47/1, pp. 1-40.

-----2005. S.v. 'Astrology III: Middle Ages'. In: W. J. Hanegraaff et al. (eds.): Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden etc.: Brill, pp. 119-128.