ASTROLOGY meant originally much the same as astronomy, knowledge of the stars," but was at length restricted to the science of predicting future events, especially the fortunes of men, from the positions of the heavenly bodies. This was considered the higher, the real science; while the mere knowledge of the stars themselves, their places and motions (astronomy), was, till a very recent period, cultivated mostly with a view to (judicial) astrology. A. is one of the most ancient forms of superstition, and is found prevailing among the nations of the east (Egyptians, Chaldeans, IIindoos, Chinese) at the very dawn of history. The Jews became much addicted to it after the captivity. It spread into the west and to Rome about the beginning of the Christian era. Astrologers played an important part at Rome, where they were called Chaldeans and mathema ticians; and though often banished by the senate and emperors under pain of death, and otherwise persecuted, they continued to hold their ground. The Roman poet Manilins, author of an astronomical poem still extant, was addicted to A. ; and even Ptolemy the astronomer did not escape the infection, which in his time had become universal, It accords well with the predestinarian doctrines of Mohammedanism, and was accordingly cultivated with great ardor by the Arabs from the 7th to the 13th century. Some of the early Christian fathers argued against the doctrines of A., others received them in a modified form. In its public capacity, the Catholic church several times condemned the system; but many zealous Catholics, even churchmen have cultivated it. Cardinal d'Ailly, " the eagle of the doctors of France" (d. 1420), is said to have calculated the horoscope of Jesus Christ, and maintained that the deluge might have been predicted by A. For centuries the most learned men continued devoted to this delusive science: Regiomon tanus, the famous mathematician Cardan, even Tycho Brahe and Kepler, could not shake off the fascination. Kepler saw the weakness of A. as a science, hut could not bring himself to deny a certain connection between the positions (" constellations") of the planets and the qualities of those under them. The Copernican system gave the death-blow to A. When the earth itself was found to be only one of the planets, it seemed absurd that all the others should be occupied in influencing it. The argument
has really little force, but it produced the effect. Belief in A. is not now ostensibly pro fessed in any Christian country, though a few solitary advocates have from time to time appeared, as J. M. Pfaff in Germany, Astrologie (Bamb., 1816). But it still holds sway in the east, and among Mohammedans wherever situated. Even in Europe the craving of the ignorant of all countries for divination is still gratified by the publication of multi tudes of almanacs containing astrological predictions, though the writers no longer believe in them.
Many passages of our old writers are unintelligible without some knowledge of astro logical terms, numbers of which have taken root in the language. In the technical rules by which human destiny was foreseen, the heavenly houses played an important part. Astrologers were by no means at one as to the way of laying out those houses. A very general way was to draw great circles through the n. and s. points of the horizon, as meridians pass through the poles, dividing the heavens, visible and invisible, into twelve equal parts—six above the horizon, and six below. These were the twelve houses, and were numbered onward, beginning with that which lay in the e. immediately below the horizon, The first was called the house of life; the second, of fortune, or riches; the third, of brethren; the fourth, of relations: the fifth, of children; the sixth, of health; the seventh, of marriage; the eighth, of death, or the upper portal; the ninth, of religion; the tenth, of dignities; the eleventh, of friends and benefactors; the twelfth, of enemies, or of captivity. The position of the twelve houses for a given time and place —the instant of an individual's birth, for instance—was a theme. '1 cl construct such a plan was to cast the person's nativity. The houses had different powers, the strongest being the first; as it contained the part of the heavens about to rise, it was called the ascendant, and the point of the ecliptic cut by its upper boundary was the horoscope. Each house had one of the heavenly bodies as its lord, who was strongest in his own house.