ASTROLOGY. The study of the stars. Astrology has played an important part in religion and magic as one of the occult sciences. It had a strong hold over the Babylonians. Babylonian astrologers carefully studied the stars and planets, and were enabled thereby —or so it was thought—to answer all kinds of questions about auspicious days, etc. Cuneiform texts show that there was an important official called the " court as trologer." The Hebrew writings have preserved few traces of the practice of the art, but this is no doubt due to the work of editors. On the other hand, it is forbidden by Mohammed, except as a help to travellers on the sea or through forests. Ancient and mediaeval astrologers undertook to calculate nativities, and to foretell a child's future from a study of the stars at the time of its birth. Mediaeval astrology also tells of star-souls and star-angels. The Hindus have family astrologers who draw up a horoscope or birth-record " of the exact time of the child's nativity, the constel lation under which it was born, with a prophecy of the duration of its life, and the circumstances, good or evil, of its probable career " (Monier-Williams). In the vil
lages the Brahman priest acts as astrologer, and the peasants consult him about every conceivable matter— about sowing and reaping, sneezing, the cries of animals, etc. The Chinese astrologers combine with the study of astrology the study of geomancy, in the belief that hills, mountains, etc., powerfully influence by their outlines the destiny of man. They have a Bureau of Astrology which selects auspicious days for important events, and to this are attached eighteen geomancers. See T. P. Hughes, 1885; Monier-Williams, Brahmanism; J. J. M. de Groot, R.S.0.; Morris Jastrow, Rel. of Babylonia and Assyria, 1S9S.