yuzuru wrote:What impresses me on the horary forums of astrology weekly is the complete lack of ethical concerns, concerns about the role of astrology, or even the most simplistic "reality check".
So, there are always "horaries" like: "is my boyfriend gay?", "if I cheat on him will he find out", "this is my horary but I will not say what was my question", "is Obama an alien?", "does horary astrology works?", "who shot Kennedy?", etc, etc, etc.
On the Astrodienst forum I used to see such unethical questions too. And even worse, not only on the horary section but also on the native chart discussions in which native charts, obviously without the knowledge of their owner where discussed, indeed with such questions bout being gay etc.
However there is nothing new under the sun, in medieval times people went to astrologers with similar questions. Although the following article unfortunately can only be accessed via universities etc, I'll mention it because of the interesting historical content.
The Stars and Human Sexuality: Some Medieval Scientific Views
Helen Lemay
Isis, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 127-137
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/230317.pdf
The article gives examples of Abenragel and Bonatti how it could be determined whether a woman was a virgin or not. However Bonatti also had ways of telling the truth a bit differently in favour of the female, indicating the loss of virginity but not by intercourse.
(for people in posession of Bonatti's works I mention some footnotes in the article concerning this matter: Bonatus, Decem tractatus astronomie, fols. 203v-204.). In Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos Book III 13 and 14 (Robbins,
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... 3D*.html#4 ) also mentions sexual inclinations. Furthermore,
the article wrote:According to
Abenragel, it is even possible to satisfy
one's curiosity about a neighbor's sex life
by means of astrology; he outlines a
method for determining whether the people
next door will have sexual intercourse
on a certain night.24 (footn. 24Abenragel, Liber in iudiciis astrorum, fol. 27v:
Cap. 24, "In questione si habuerit rem cum muliere
hac nocte vel non.")
Whether this is possible or not, it illustrates how far people could go to satisfy their curiousness.
Short time ago I got a second hand copy of Keith Thomas' 'Religion and the Decline of Magic', expounding on the place of magic, astrology etc. in the social structure of 16th and 17th century England. I immediately started in the chapters on astrology. There it is explained that (horary)astrology was often used to find a thief, by describing the physical features. Previously this suspect finding was done by village wizards etc.
Nowadays most people wouldn't think of trying such a thing through astrology (I hope

), and fortunately there are laws that protect suspects.
However it must all be seen in the social context of those days. Thomas' book emphasizes the social role of the astrologer, although often wrong, was important for giving advice using common sense. It seems that few things have changed today.
And centuries before it was similar,
the article wrote:Bonatti's discussion of virginity gives
us evidence of how the practitioner of the
science of the stars could have functioned
as an arbiter of sexual disputes
within the society.