ASTROLOGY, originally a discourse concerning the stars; subsequently the true science of astronomy; now the pseudo science which pretends to fore tell future events by studying the posi tion of the stars, and ascertaining their alleged influence upon human destiny. Natural astrology professes to predict changes in the weather from studying the stars and judicial or judiciary as trology to foretell events bearing on the destiny of individual human beings or the race of mankind generally.
The Chinese, the Egyptians, the Chal deans, the Romans, and most other an cient nations, with the honorable excep tion of the Greeks, became implicit be lievers in astrology. It was partly the cause and partly the effect of the prev alent worship of the heavenly bodies. The later Jews, the Arabs, with other Mohammedan races, and the Christians in medieval Europe, were all great cul tivators of astrology. The ordinary method of procedure in the Middle Ages was to divide a globe or a planisphere into 12 portions by circles running from pole to pole, like those which now mark meridians of longitude. Each of the 12 spaces or intervals between these circles was called a "house" of heaven.
The sun, the moon, and the stars all pass once in 24 hours through the por tion of heavens represented by the 12 "houses"; nowhere, however, except at the equator, are the same stars uniform ly together in the same house. Every house has one of the heavenly bodies ruling over it as its lord.
The houses symbolize different ad vantages or disadvantages. The first is the house of life; the second, of riches; the third, of brethren; the fourth, of parents; the fifth, of children; the sixth, of health; the seventh, of marriage; the eighth, of death; the ninth, of reli gion; the tenth, of dignities; the elev enth, of friends; and the twelfth, of enemies. The houses vary in strength, the first one, that containing the part of the heavens about to rise, being the most powerful of all; it is called the ascendant, while the point of the eclip tic just rising is termed the horoscope. The important matter was to ascertain what house and star was in the ascend ant at the moment of a person's birth, from which it was deemed possible to augur his fortune. Astrology still flour ishes in Asia and Africa.