Thank you Andrew for the catholic link, it was very illuminating. What comes to Valentine Weigel, when I read Robert Zoller?s article about him
http://robertezoller.com/articles/a18.shtml
it seems to me that Weigel does not wholly represent the view that David Pingree calls Hermeticism, but rather the Gnostic/Elwellian point of view.

Zoller writes:

Valentine Weigel (1533-1588), a Lutheran Minister, who (like many Lutheran clergymen of the 16th and 17th centuries) was also an alchemist and an astrologer argues in his Astrology Theologised that the natural Adam (the average man) was unregenerate and that Man was wholly under the sway of the stars. According to Lutheran mysticism (for the most part identical to 16th & 17th century Rosicrucian mysticism) the stars themselves are in a fallen state as a result of Lucifer's rebellion and as such work on us as part of his kingdom. Weigel, knowing this, urges us to be wise and rule our stars rather than be ruled by them. Knowing that this is easier said than done, he offers a method for accomplishing it, which is of interest to us even today, as the reader familiar with esoteric training will immediately see in what follows.

In Astrology Theologised chapter VI, he tells us of the Regeneration by which we may be freed of that which causes us misery and bondage. This misery and bondage to Fate may be transformed into joy and freedom.

I must say that I?m starting to feel quite confused about this whole issue! The division is really not as clear as it first seemed.

Sari

Papretis wrote:I must say that I?m starting to feel quite confused about this whole issue! The division is really not as clear as it first seemed.

Yes, there seem to be a number of nuanced approaches, although the patristic texts (i.e., the Fathers of the Church) speak well enough for themselves, as do the catechetical instructions of the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. Weigel seems to position himself midway between Hermeticism and Gnosticism -- perhaps a Protestant compromise?

Much of the reason for this confusion is the highly syncretic nature of most of the Christian texts. Most people know that in the early days of Christianity there was a deliberate attempt to take on many major components of other belief systems in order to attract people to Christianity. Neoplatonism was one of the most adopted of previous philosophies. Augustine (4th-5th centuries CE) was a big fan of Neoplatonism and if you read ?City of God? you?ll see plenty of evidence of his love for Neoplatonism. Marsilio Ficino (15th century CE) was the first philosopher/priest to specifically attempt to prove the compatibility of the two philosophies (Neoplatonism and Christianity) and wrote extensively on this.

The Hermetic texts, in particular the Corpus Hermeticum, have undergone many years of adaptation by Christian writers. One theory in academic circles as to the virtual absence of astrology in the Corpus Hermeticum is that translators (most likely in the Byzantine era) deliberately left out these tracts when they translated them. What we see now as a separate body of texts consisting of the seventeen treatises that make up the Corpus Hermeticum are merely a reflection of the prejudices of those who compiled them or an accident of textual transmission. One of the early Church authorities, Lactantius, who studied the Hermetica, was familiar with more texts than we are presently aware but only tended to quote form those texts that fitted with the particular doctrinal points he was trying to make. Many translations were pieced together from the quotes of various writers such as Lactantius so what we end up with is a very prejudiced and not so accurate translation.

Philosophies such as Hermeticism and Gnosticism are sometimes closely related. In 1945, when they discovered the Nag Hammadi library, they discovered a couple of treatises that were almost identical to those of the Corpus Hermeticum. What was interesting though was that the Gnostic version still had the astrology included whereas the Hermetic didn?t.

I don?t think the division is clear because it is not really there.

Yes Sue, I can see it now.

Now we only have to figure out, if our horoscope is something to go beyond or something to go deeper into . Dane Rudhyar propagated strongly the latter opinion saying that our horoscope tells about our dharma, our destiny, our potentialities. For one point of view, that if anything would be a "fatalistic" approach, accepting God's will for us, whatever we mean by "God", and Rudhayr is seen as the father of psychological astrology, anything else but a traditionalist!

The church seems to have been quite inconsistent about it's views on astrology, dooming it on the other hand because astrology is fatalistic and God has given man free will, but if you tried to figure out what will happen in the future and overcome your "fate" by using talismans and amulets or otherwise, they might have accused you of black magic and witchcraft and burned you in fire .

Sari

Hermeticism as a Christianised form of Gnosticism is an intriguing idea.

As a former Augustinian religious, I remain well aware of the Bishop of Hippo's views on the matter. He came to accept the miraculous towards the close of his life; would his views towards astrology have undergone a similar transformation? Probably not because, unlike miracles, astrology is not the product of either divine intervention or human superstition, but is demonic through and through, or so the primitive Christian community believed. This view does not appear to have changed over the centuries, at least not on the magisterial, catechetical level. Demons everywhere!

The following extract from Ibn 'Arabi might be of some interest:

http://www.besharapublications.org.uk/M ... ology.html

"Astrology...owes its origin to the Alexandrine hermeticism."

The church seems to have been quite inconsistent about it's views on astrology, dooming it on the other hand because astrology is fatalistic and God has given man free will, but if you tried to figure out what will happen in the future and overcome your "fate" by using talismans and amulets or otherwise, they might have accused you of black magic and witchcraft and burned you in fire .

Slightly off topic here but for the sake of historical accuracy, it might be time to put this myth to rest. Astrologers seem to take a perverse pleasure in ascribing all sorts of horrible executions of occultists, usually by burning, to the Roman Catholic Church and the Inquisition in particular. And while it is true that happened from time to time, the whole story is a bit more complex.

As for "The Inquisition" it may come as a surprise that they did not have the power to sentence anyone to death. Only secular authorities could do that. It would be naive to assume the Inquisition had little influence, but they had no legal power to condemn. If the Inquisition found no heresy, then there would be no secular trial for heresy. In fact one historian has argued that the Inquistion was formed to stop summary executions for heresy, which in some cases was doubtless a pretext for getting rid of some inconvenient political rivals. I doubt the Church even recommended a death sentence for heresy in all cases. Aquinas didn't and I think Augustine and others felt simple excommunication was enough.

The Spanish Inquisition is a whole other matter, and this is where the Church gets its fearsome reputation, but that matter seems more like the exception than the rule. The Roman Church had its hands full with political problems, it didn't need to go hunting astrologers or occultists.


http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm

Tom

Tom wrote:The Spanish Inquisition is a whole other matter, and this is where the Church gets its fearsome reputation, but that matter seems more like the exception than the rule. The Roman Church had its hands full with political problems, it didn't need to go hunting astrologers or occultists.

Hi Tom et. al.,

Yes this is true. Ironic, yes? But it was the Protestant Princes of Europe who burned most of the alleged witches at the stake. I suspect the R.C. Church gets most of the blame because it is, after all, the most highly organized and internally cohesive, with a penchant for trans-national meddling. Oh well -- a pox on all their houses!

I can see that this discussion is very old by date but I'm reading it just now and want to quote a latin proverb which I like very much and which I heard from a very devoted hermeticist and astrolger:

"Astra inclinant, non necessitant"

Plain translation would be:
"The stars incline; they do not determine".

Someone would argue this, but I believe that great deal of our life is in our minds. Maybe sounds modernistically but Deb pointed out and quoted traditional sources of the similar attitude by the old astrologers.
I believe in the proverb that Knowledge is Power, I've witnessed this in my life in many occasions: that if I didn't had the knowledge then I would have blame the stars. Of course, there are external factors that influence us, I do not believe that everything is illusion of the mind, but I do believe that the truth is always somewhere in between. The truth must be in the Balance, and if there are two separate opinions of something, maybe the one is more right then the other, but the other holds some truth also.

The discussion of free will vs determinism is old as it is old the thought of the human race, so we can not invent a 'hot water' (as we use to say in my country), but we can stick to the middle path and do not reject either one per se and in totalle.

I like these quotes by Zoller too
(they are from this interview http://www.skyscript.co.uk/zoller.html):

"God has given man free will, but man doesn't seem to want to use it much."

"Occasionally the solution arises as a result of intuition, which seems to solve conundrums which the reason runs into; but the problem I have with intuition is that it is like God - it makes its own mind up as to when it is going to manifest and when it's not, so an awful lot of the time I'm left in the dark with my own reason."

Astrology, for me, is an indication of God's will. God created the cosmos, the lights, the firmament, and all the rest of that sort of stuff for purposes, for signs and times. In the final analysis, there is only one will - and mine is not that will. So, if I can conform myself to that will and work in accordance with it, perhaps there's a chance that I can achieve those goals that I was referring to. Astrology might help me to do that, or at least it might help me to recognize that my efforts, ultimately, are not good enough - there's something larger that has to come into the picture.

So, to the degree to which you become humbled by astrology and scared of astrology and realize your own incompetence and insufficiency, I think that you arrive at the first step from which real spiritual work can begin. That's my current opinion on the subject. If astrology leads us to that realization, it has done a major service for mankind.

Astrology also, I think, can do service to mankind by showing that things happen in their own times - that the individual human will sometimes appears to be capable of making things happen before their times, but most of the time what people do just nuances, fine-tunes, or twists a little bit the way things actually happen.