[Unation!Een] Enigma of Esoteric Nothingness

The Astrologers and Their Creed By Christopher McIntosh Proudly Brought To You By TOC The Astrologers and Their Creed By Christopher McIntosh Contents: Book Cover (Front) (Back) Scan / Edit Notes Foreword Preface 1 - The origins of astrology 2 - The Hellenic world 3 - The Roman world 4 - Oriental astrology 5 - Early Christendom and the Arab world 6 - From the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment 7 - The nineteenth century 8 - The spread of astrology 9 - Some aspects of modern astrology 10 - Astrology and the occult tradition 11 - How the horoscope works 12 - The verdict on astrology Index (Removed) Scan / Edit Notes Format: v1.5 (PDF - no security) Genera: Astrology / Divination Extra's: Pictures Included Copyright: 1969 / 1971 Scanned: September 12th 2002 Foreword Astrology has been a bete noire to many a shepherd: the doctors of the great religions either rejected it or they frowned upon it, with very few exceptions - and their more zealous followers persecuted the practitioners; ancient and medieval emperors and kings were fascinated by it, but they feared the astrologer who would read the stars against them; modern political and religious charismatics officially scoff at the art and its performers - and yet (the author's statement notwithstanding) quite a few of them have clandestine recourse to it - I am thinking of Hitler and Hess, who had their own court astrologers in secret, even when they persecuted all other practitioners. Modern scientists and scholars, in the Western world at least, deny astrology even a theoretical lease on life; but there are notable exceptions. Some of my own anthropological and Orientalist colleagues swear by if, refusing to enlist the orthodox scientific argument of the non-sequitur type when talking about astrology. But the professors at the academies of the Western world do not even get annoyed at people who want to establish astrology as a science, much as they no longer get annoyed at people who want to sell a perpetuum mobile. I am afraid that nothing of what Mr. Mclntosh has to say in this fascinating volume is likely to sway the diehard scientists and scholars around the Atlantic. The situation is quite different in the East. In all Asian countries I believe, but in India, Pakistan, Ceylon, and many other Southern Asian areas I know that all people, including professional scientists, not only believe in astrology's workings very much like the people the author writes about, but they seek the astrologer's counsel for such routine things as the marriages of their children, inceptive actions, and more general advice. The most sophisticated and the most westernised in India today take the astrologer for granted, and the apologetic vis-a-vis the critical West runs somewhat like 'we don't really believe in it, but our elders do and we do not want to hurt them'. Be that as it may, if we were to tabulate the learned of the earth, in a single continuum, without grouping them by country and nation, the believers and the users of astrology would outnumber the opponents - which, objectively, does not really mean much for or against it, since it is well known that all Frenchmen may be wrong, including the General. Christopher Mclntosh has tried to do several things, and he has done them well: in the first place, he has given us a fine historical account of astrology from its Babylonian beginnings to our contemporary scene; there may be more erudite accounts, and more elaborate ones, but they would be much longer and much less accessible; or else they are written by believers, converts, and other enthusiasts. It is not really relevant whether the author is a believer - he writes with sympathy and empathy, and I do not think that anyone, believer or opponent, could have produced a better account unless he set out to write a work of pure footnoted scholarship, one of those impressive bibliographies with a commentary which stand for classical historical erudition - but such was not the purpose of this author. This is an eminently readable book, and one that disproves the obiter dictum of my illustrious colleague Professor Nicolai Nicolayevitch Poppe, the world's foremost Mongolist, who said in a faculty meeting (in a heavy Russo-German accent) 'a good book is a boring book - a bad book is an interesting book'. Let me conclude my say with a statement of my own faith: I do not believe in astrology in any sense. I have seen amazingly correct predictions made about persons, fates, and events, by astrologers, especially in India; but they haven't changed my mind a bit, simply because statistics go against their case - astrologers and their votaries tend to ignore or forget the predominant mis-firings over the few bull's-eyes, because the latter are so impressive. But more than the lack of empirical corroboration, it is the logical and the ethical aspect of it that bars me from even trying to enter the circle of the adepts: logically, there can be no correlation between the stars and people, because no chain of human events can even theoretically be shown to follow the motions of bodies in space - and like all metaphysical utterances, astrological statements cannot be verified or falsified - for just like God's goodness or the pervasiveness of an Absolute Power, the astrological theses cannot answer the one question which any set of statements must pass before it can make the claim to be scientific: what sort of events would the astrologer consider as refuting his art? The answer is 'none' - for whatever happens, or does not happen, is precisely a proof to him. Astrology, like all other metaphysics, does not make any concession for those who are not ready to accept anything and everything as proof. On the ethical side, I confess that I tend to think the assumptions of astrology to be morally unacceptable: for if our life is determined - be that in toto or in pane - then moral responsibility is abridged for the individual. Mclntosh quotes many answers to this charge, preferred as it was throughout the ages. But as an irreparable indeterminist, I will not accept moral determinism from outside, however segmentary. I have studied this script with zest, amazement and some amusement; it does not change my views - but it does make me more lenient, and perchance more interested, in people who (Mclntosh's quote from the literature which he has purveyed) 'waste their time studying how others have wasted their time'. Thus, believers will enjoy this work of love, as grist to their mills - and non-believers, as grist to theirs.... Agehananda Bharati Professor of Anthropology Syracuse University New York Preface 'Consider the aspects of the disastrous influenza schemozzle.' The main words of that unlikely sentence have an interesting thing in common. They are all derived from astrology. Consider and disaster come from two different Latin words meaning star; aspect was originally used exclusively to mean the angle between two planets in a person's horoscope; influenza is an Italian word meaning influence, in this case the influence of the stars; and schemozzle comes from two Yiddish words, schlimm and Mazzal, which together mean 'bad heaven' or 'evil constellation'. These words and many more of astrological origin have become so familiar that few people, apart from etymologists, ever stop to wonder where they came from or how they became so deeply entrenched in our language. Yet their presence is an indication of the firm background of belief in astrology from which they emerged. Today most people regard astrology as, at best, a harmless indulgence enjoyed by the readers of the horoscope pages of national newspapers, and, at worst, an irritating remnant of medieval superstition. Yet an increasing minority of serious-minded people are following Carl Jung's example in regarding it as a subject worthy of deeper consideration. This is not because astrology has made itself scientifically respectable; it is because science itself is beginning to lose its respectability. More and more people are becoming conscious of the fact that, while man's environment has been made more intelligible by science, man himself has become a deeper mystery than ever. It is becoming increasingly apparent that, where man is concerned, our scientific and rational way of looking at things is in many respects less revealing and less helpful than the more symbolic ways employed by the Babylonians, the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Greeks, and the other great civilisations of the past. Astrology is one aspect of this symbolic conception of the world, and my purpose is to make possible a clearer reappraisal of it by tracing its development from its earliest origins and examining the various forms in which it has been practised at different times and in different countries. Astrology comes into an odd category among human pursuits. There are certain activities, like eating, that are practised wherever mankind exists. There are certain others, like smoking, that are the inventions of particular societies and then spread throughout the world. Astrology lies between the two, being an art that has been practised by almost every civilisation throughout the world and yet has developed along lines determined by the particular time, place, and historical setting in which it arose. The river of astrology has many tributaries, but all of them join up with a mainstream whose source is in ancient Babylon. To follow this river through history is to take an interesting route, touching on religion, politics, magic, art, literature and even music. I hope the reader will pardon me for turning aside occasionally to explore a tantalising branch of the stream. 1969 CAM.

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