A New Book on Astrology's History
Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 8:54 pm
Hi Gang,
I just read about this book on another forum. I copied a review that was posted there and thought there might be some interest. Perhaps we could drop notes about the house that say something like: "I really, really, really hope someone buys me this for Christmas."
The Fated Sky by Benson Bobrick
Mr Bobrick is a legitimate historian who has a strong interest in astrology: so strong that he recently signed up for lessons from John Frawley.
The following review was taken from simonsays.com
The man question in the Callanan household will be: should I wait for Christmas or should I just buy it now?"
"Description:
In a horoscope he cast in 1647 for Charles I, William Lilly, a noted
English astrologer, made the following judgment: "Luna is with
Antares, a violent fixed star, which is said to denote violent death,
and Mars is approaching Caput Algol, which is said to denote
beheading." Two years later the king's head fell on the
block. "Astrology must be right," wrote the American astrologer
Evangeline Adams, a claimed descendant of President John Quincy
Adams, in a challenge to skeptics in 1929. "There can be no appeal
from the Infinite."
The Fated Sky explores both the history of astrology and the
controversial subject of its influence in history. It is the first
serious book to fully engage astrology in this way.
Astrology is the oldest of the occult sciences. It is also the origin
of science itself. Astronomy, mathematics, and other disciplines
arose in part to make possible the calculations necessary in casting
horoscopes. For five thousand years, from the ancient Near East to
the modern world, the influence of the stars has been viewed as
shaping the course and destiny of human affairs. According to recent
polls, at least 30 percent of the American public believes in
astrology, though, as Bobrick reveals, modern astrology is also
utterly different from the doctrine of the stars that won the respect
and allegiance of the greatest thinkers, scientists, and writers --
Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Arab, and Persian -- of an earlier day.
Statesmen, popes, and kings once embraced it, and no less a figure
than St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian, thought it not
incompatible with Christian faith. There are some two hundred
astrological allusions in Shakespeare's plays, and not one of their
astrological predictions goes unfulfilled. The great astronomers of
the scientific revolution -- Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler -- were
adherents. Isaac Newton's appetite for mathematics was first whetted
by an astrological text. In more recent times, prominent figures such
as Churchill, de Gaulle, and Reagan have consulted astrologers and
sometimes heeded their advice. Today universities as diverse as
Oxford in England and the University of Zaragoza in Spain offer
courses in the subject, fulfilling Carl Jung's prediction decades ago
that astrology would again become the subject of serious discourse.
Whether astrology actually has the powers that have been ascribed to
it is, of course, open to debate. But there is no doubt that it
maintains an unshakeable hold on the human mind. In The Fated Sky,
Benson Bobrick has written an absolutely captivating and
comprehensive account of this engrossing subject and its enduring
influence on history and the history of ideas."
Tom
I just read about this book on another forum. I copied a review that was posted there and thought there might be some interest. Perhaps we could drop notes about the house that say something like: "I really, really, really hope someone buys me this for Christmas."
The Fated Sky by Benson Bobrick
Mr Bobrick is a legitimate historian who has a strong interest in astrology: so strong that he recently signed up for lessons from John Frawley.
The following review was taken from simonsays.com
The man question in the Callanan household will be: should I wait for Christmas or should I just buy it now?"
"Description:
In a horoscope he cast in 1647 for Charles I, William Lilly, a noted
English astrologer, made the following judgment: "Luna is with
Antares, a violent fixed star, which is said to denote violent death,
and Mars is approaching Caput Algol, which is said to denote
beheading." Two years later the king's head fell on the
block. "Astrology must be right," wrote the American astrologer
Evangeline Adams, a claimed descendant of President John Quincy
Adams, in a challenge to skeptics in 1929. "There can be no appeal
from the Infinite."
The Fated Sky explores both the history of astrology and the
controversial subject of its influence in history. It is the first
serious book to fully engage astrology in this way.
Astrology is the oldest of the occult sciences. It is also the origin
of science itself. Astronomy, mathematics, and other disciplines
arose in part to make possible the calculations necessary in casting
horoscopes. For five thousand years, from the ancient Near East to
the modern world, the influence of the stars has been viewed as
shaping the course and destiny of human affairs. According to recent
polls, at least 30 percent of the American public believes in
astrology, though, as Bobrick reveals, modern astrology is also
utterly different from the doctrine of the stars that won the respect
and allegiance of the greatest thinkers, scientists, and writers --
Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Arab, and Persian -- of an earlier day.
Statesmen, popes, and kings once embraced it, and no less a figure
than St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian, thought it not
incompatible with Christian faith. There are some two hundred
astrological allusions in Shakespeare's plays, and not one of their
astrological predictions goes unfulfilled. The great astronomers of
the scientific revolution -- Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler -- were
adherents. Isaac Newton's appetite for mathematics was first whetted
by an astrological text. In more recent times, prominent figures such
as Churchill, de Gaulle, and Reagan have consulted astrologers and
sometimes heeded their advice. Today universities as diverse as
Oxford in England and the University of Zaragoza in Spain offer
courses in the subject, fulfilling Carl Jung's prediction decades ago
that astrology would again become the subject of serious discourse.
Whether astrology actually has the powers that have been ascribed to
it is, of course, open to debate. But there is no doubt that it
maintains an unshakeable hold on the human mind. In The Fated Sky,
Benson Bobrick has written an absolutely captivating and
comprehensive account of this engrossing subject and its enduring
influence on history and the history of ideas."
Tom
I already have it on order with Amazon. 
They had it down as being released in December but I guess they got it out early. Hopefully I will get my copy soon.