Elizabethan Astrology

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Bacon's proposal, despite his protestations, did not call for the creation of a radically new discipline. In claiming that such histories of the arts did not exist, Bacon may have been reacting more to the historical methodologies with which he was familiar than to the existing state of mathematical histories.

 For example Jean Bodin, whom Bacon certainly had read, devoted considerable but unsystematic attention in his 1566 Methodus ad facilem [End Page 102] historiarum cognitionem to describing the conditions of learning throughout world history.

He wrote, 

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Not only the virtues of our men are equal to those of the ancients but also the discipline. Literature

suffers changes of fortune. First the arts arise in some places through the practice and labor of

talented men, then they develop, later they flourish for a while at a fixed level, then languish in their

old age, and finally begin to die and are buried in a lasting oblivion by the eternal calamity of wars, or

because too great abundance (an evil much to be feared in these times, of course) brings satiety to

the frivolous, or because God inflicts just punishments upon those who direct useful knowledge to the

ruin of men. Although disciplines had gradually developed among the Greeks, so that they believed

these arts reached their peak, such a change came about afterward that Greece herself, to judge from

her present predicament, seems never to have existed.
 

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 Re: "Abraham, Planter of Mathematics"
« Reply #22 on: October 14, 2008, 11:42:39 pm » Quote Modify 

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He continued, "I omit how Egypt, India, and Ethiopia teemed with many philosophers, geometrists, and astrologers; how many well-known mathematicians were in Chaldea before Greece had any literature. I come back to our times in which, after a long eclipse of letters throughout almost the entire world, suddenly such a wealth of knowledge shone forth, such fertility of talents existed, as no age ever excelled."42 Bodin shared with Bacon and Ramus a cyclical vision of the history of knowledge; but he and Bacon did not map transmissions as Ramus did. [End Page 103]

Bodin dotted his text with "small memorials," and made no great plea for a history of the sciences. But other artes historicae did contain systematic proposals for, and examples of, the sort of history Bacon desired. As Donald R. Kelley has shown, the innovative fifth chapter of Christophe Milieu's 1551 De scribenda universitatis rerum historia outlined a historia litteraria, which began with a discussion of the Pillars of Seth and charted the position of learning in societies from the Pillars to Milieu's present.43 Equally detailed was Reinier Reineck's 1583 Methodus Legendi Cognoscendique Historiam, in which a section on the historia scholarum described the Pillars as a schoolboys' primer from the time of Enoch to the Flood.44 Reineck also admiringly described both Vergil's work and Caspar Peucer's 1572 De Divinatione as exemplary instances of this kind of history.45 Bacon's plea for a history of science was only a later example of late sixteenth-century proposals for a genre that some felt already existed. The self-proclaimed novelty of his proposal was either ill-informed or disingenuous. 

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Through the seventeenth century the Pillars continued to play a central role in histories that located the origins of mathematics in the deep ancient world. In England, for example, Sir Walter Ralegh relied heavily on them in his 1614 History of the World. Ralegh followed Pico, discussing the history of magic within the setting of its postdiluvian corruption, but like Annius treated many of the mathematical arts—including alchemy and astrology—as predating Chaldean corruption.46 John Wallis's 1649 inaugural oration as Savilian Professor of Geometry relied heavily on the Pillars as evidence for the presence of intricate knowledge of mathematics in the ancient world. For Wallis, the astrological knowledge of the Chaldeans, corrupt as it was, proved beyond a doubt the widespread diffusion of mathematical learning.47 [End Page 104]

The Pillars thus served as crucial evidence for mathematics in the ancient world, and a history of mathematics that began almost from the Fall. To topple the Pillars was to topple this vision, a feat achieved in 1722 by William Whiston, Newton's successor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. But the biblical antiquarian Whiston did not debunk the attribution of these Pillars to Seth to stake a claim regarding the history of mathematical learning. Rather, the Unitarian Whiston argued that second-century Jewish redactors had corrupted the true text of scripture by introducing Trinitarian fables. Whiston claimed that Josephus had been working with the authentic Scriptures—indeed, he thought, the Temple's copy of the Bible, which Josephus may have received directly from Titus. Whiston was thus forced to explain away any incongruities within Josephus's text, and he deemed the Pillars of Seth a "strange supposition," which needed to be dismissed.48 Josephus, Whiston claimed, was simply uninformed about Egyptian history, its pharaohs and obelisks, when he attributed the pillars to Seth instead of their rightful builder, the Pharoah "Seth-os, or Sethosis, or Sesotris the Great."49 While still dating the Pillars to almost 1200 BC—easily predating the high cultures of Greece and Rome—Whiston undermined the bedrock evidence for an Annian history of science.50 

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This history of histories illuminates contemporary understandings of mathematics, astrology, and astronomy from the late fifteenth to seventeenthcenturies. Consistent in all of the authors is the understanding that mathematics had a long history. Some virtue always obtained in learning Euclid or Ptolemy; nobody questioned the utility of these arts in agriculture, husbandry, navigation, and chronology. But though none of these scholars condemned all forms of sky-gazing, all agreed that they could be corrupted. The question was where and when corruptions were introduced. For individual [End Page 105] authors real differences existed between astrology and astronomy, even if there was no consensus regarding their boundaries. The issue was whether astrology properly belonged with the constellation of orthodox studies, or with the idolatrous divinatory arts of the Chaldeans.

Further, the debate was conducted entirely within ecclesiastical history. The history of mathematics was inseparable from the history of the church and the history of worship. The orthodoxy of various arts was proven neither by showing that they did not abrogate divine authority, nor by simply showing their venerable antiquity. The reputation of the communities that produced these specialized arts licensed or condemned their adoption, and their genealogies argued for or against their orthodoxy. Chamber was not being hysterical when he depicted London as a second Babylon; to him, the city swarmed with an idolatrous lay priest caste performing rites and offending the divine will, exactly as Babylon had under the sway of the erring Chaldeans. A practicing community of Hebraic astrologers in the ancient world, as described by Josephus, served the antithetical purpose. Theological and historical debate provided the terrain for justifying mathematical and astronomical activities. 

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Despite Bacon's claims, there was a healthy history of science in the sixteenth century. Scholars, admittedly, drew up a history of mathematics quite at odds with a progressive history of science. Their history of science was a degeneration narrative, a problem of recovery instead of invention, of cleansing rather than expansion, with a Golden Age behind rather than ahead. But it was a history, nevertheless, and one that fits neatly with the claims of Vesalius, Scaliger, and others who depicted their innovations as reformations of ancient disciplines. These scholars conjured an ancient world teeming with mathematical practice, directing them towards various forms of lost or obscured expertise.51 The narrative of their history of science may not have resembled Kepler's, but by directing attention to the ancient authorization for mathematics, they contributed to the process of legitimizing mathematical knowledge. 

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Footnotes



I would like to thank Lauren Kassell, Robert Goulding, James Byrne, Darrel Rutkin, Amy Haley, Anthony Grafton, Simon Schaffer, and Walter Stephens for their invaluable comments, suggestions and improvements. The paper was given in a slightly different form from the 2004 History of Science Society Meeting version at the 2004 Thomas Harriot Seminar, and I thank the participants of both for useful questions and suggestions.

1. Francis Bacon, The tvvoo bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and aduancement of learning, diuine and humane (London, 1605), Aa.1.r-Aa.4.v. The history of science literature on Bacon is immense. In this context see Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, trans. Sasha Rabinovitch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Topica universalis: eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983), 212–25.

2. Bacon, Bb.3.v.

3. There are few studies devoted to the histories early modern scholars composed for various sciences. By far the most important is Nicholas Jardine's Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's A Defence of Tycho against Ursus, with Essays on its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Jardine focuses on Kepler, who was more central to the Scientific Revolution than any of the individuals in this article. Kepler's history was distinct in its discussion of, and commitment to, a history of technical advancement. But to attribute the origins of the history of science to his work, as Jardine does, requires an understanding of the discipline as fundamentally committed to a progressive narrative. See also Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 93–123; Anthony Grafton, "From Apotheosis to Analysis: Some Late Renaissance Histories of Classical Astronomy," in History and the Disciplines: The Reclassification of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, ed. Donald R. Kelley (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 261–76. D.P. Walker's, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London: Duckworth, 1972) is the classic work on the power of genealogies of knowledge in early modern Europe.

4. For classical and late antique attitudes towards the disciplines under consideration here, see esp. Fritz Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, trans. Franklin Philip (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), esp. 20–60. See also Jan N. Bremmer, "The Birth of the Term 'Magic'" in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (Leuven: Peeters, 2002) 1–11 and Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 19–26.

5. The classic studies of this context are Paola Zambelli (ed.), "Astrologi hallucinati": Stars and the End of the World in Luther's Time (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1986); and Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

6. See S.A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional, Religious, and Philosophical Systems: with Text, Translation, and Commentary (Phoenix: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998).

7. Pico della Mirandola, Opera Omnia (Basel, 1601), 80: "Proposuimus & magica theoremata, in quibus duplicem esse Magiam significamus, quarum altera daemonum tota opere & authoritate constat, res medius fidius execranda & portentosa: altera nihil est aliud, cum bene exploratur, quam naturalis philosophiae absoluta consummatio." Recent work on Pico includes H. Darrel Rutkin, Astrology, Natural Philosophy and the History of Science, c. 1250–1700: Studies toward an Interpretation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Disputationes adversus Astrologiam Divinatricem (Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 2002), esp. 230–467, with considered discussion of the various traditions of Pico scholarship; and Steven Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 55–81.

8. Pico, 113. "Tota magia, quae in usu est apud modernos, & quam merito exterminat Ecclesia, nullam habet firmitatem, nullam veritatem, nullum firmamentum: quia pendet ex manu hostium primae veritatis, potestatum harum tenebrarum, quae tenebras falsitatis malae dispositis intellectibus offendunt."

9. See Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 93–134; and Rutkin, 338–43.

10. Pico, 483.   

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11. See books 11 and 12 of Pico della Mirandola's Disputationes adversus Astrologiam divinatricem, esp. 11.2 at 483. For Abraham's teaching, see 485.

12. For Vergil, see Denys Hay, Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); Brian Copenhaver, "The Historiography of Discovery in the Renaissance: The Sources and Composition of Polydore Vergil's De inventoribus rerum, 1–111," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978): 192–214; and Copenhaver's introduction to Polydore Vergil: On Discovery, ed. and trans. Brian P. Copenhaver (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002) vi-xxx.

13. On Discovery, 147–49.

14. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 1930), I.ii.68–71. For Josephus, and his later reputation, see Josephus, the Bible, and History, ed. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989).

15. See On Discovery 139–47. For the references in Josephus, see I.viii.166–68. For the medieval readings of Seth's Pillars, see Cora E. Lutz, "Remigius' Ideas on the Origin and the Classification of the Seven Liberal Arts," Medievalia et humanistica 10 (1956): 32–49.

16. It should be noted that Vergil expressed caveats about astrology despite his genealogy: "Such was the beginning of the art of astrology, which doubtless was devised simply to befuddle sound minds" (On Discovery, 143). This runs contrary to his enthusiasm for letters, mathematics, and other arts that shared its genealogy.

17. For Annius see Walter Stephens, "Berosus Chaldaeus: Counterfeit and Fictive Editors of the Early Sixteenth Century" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University, 1979); parts of which were integrated into his Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History, and Nationalism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); and his "Livres de haulte gresse: Bibliographic Myth from Rabelais to Du Bartas," MLN 120.1 Supplement (January 2005): S60-S83. See also Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

18. I have used the 1552 Antwerp edition [Annius of Viterbo], Berosi sacerdotis Chaldaici, antiquitatum Italiae ac totius orbis libri quinque . . . (Antwerp, 1552), 41. "Ante aquarum cladem famosam qua universus periit orbis, multa praeterierunt saecula, quae a nostris Chaldaeis fideliter servata."

19. Annius, 45. "Erant igitur in usu litterae, & ars fusilis, & lateritia & vaticinia, mille annis & amplius ante inundationem terrarum."

20. Annius, 44. "Verum quod ab Adam primo condito coeperint literae & disciplinae infusae, non est ex [fide] tantum, sed etiam historia gentium & traditione Chaldaeorum qui se astronomiam & literas habuisse ante Alexandri monarchiam tribus millibus & sexcentis annis ac trigintaquator asserunt. . . . Quare coniectura & argumentum firmum est, ab ipso Atavo eius primo Adam eundem Enoch suscepisse literas & disciplinas, cuius tempore fuisse literas & disciplinas Adae infusas Theologi asserunt, & eodem tempore se cepisse literas & Astronomiam Chaldaei affirmant."

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21. Stephens, "Berosus Chaldaeus." The notion of the "pious Chaldaean" is explored in depth 57–135, while the Annian Berosus's portrayal of the piety of his sources is discussed from 136–208.

22. See Stephens, "Berosus Chaldaeus," 136–208 for Annian-focused discussion of the importance to early modern scholars of saving ancient historical texts preserved from obliteration, with special focus on the Pillars. Some of this section has been published in Stephens, "Livres de haulte gresse."

23. For the Neohermetic tradition, see Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964); for the Neoplatonic tradition see James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990).

24. For Ramus in general, see French Renaissance Studies, 1540–70, ed. Peter Sharratt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1976). For Ramus and the history of mathematics, see Reijer Hooykas, Humanisme, science et réforme: Pierre de la Ramée (1515–1572) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1958); and articles by Bruyère-Robinet, Vasoli, and Cifoletti in Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 70.1 (1986).

25. Peter Ramus, Scholae Mathematicarum, Libri Unus et Triginta (Basle, 1569), 1. "Aristoteles igitur 1.coeli & 1.meteor. artes aeternas, ut mundum, arbitratur, sed earum tanquam stellarum varios ortus & occasus esse, ut modo excitentur & floreant, modo jaceant & contemnantur. Haec magni philosophi magna prorsus sententia, artes sunt aeternarum & immutabilium rerum: at ipsarum apud homines notitia nequaquam est aeterna." Ramus is here extrapolating from Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) [270b1], and [352b1–353a1], though Aristotle here is not referring to arts specifically, but to the vicissitudes of all phenomena in an eternal world.

26. See Joannes Stadius, Tabulae Bergenses aequabilis et adparentus motus Orbium Coelestium . . . (Cologne, 1560), 1–3; Heinrich Rantzau, Catalogus Imperatorum, Regum, ac Principium qui astrologicam artem amarunt . . . (Antwerp, 1580), esp. 19–24; Matthaeus Dresserus, Isagoges historicae pars prima . . . (Leipzig, 1593), 26–29.

27. For Howard see Linda Levy Peck, Northampton, Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982); and her article on Northumberland in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Linda Levy Peck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For the astrological debates of the 1580s, see esp. Margaret Aston, "The Fiery Trigon Conjunction: an Elizabethan Astrological Prediction," Isis 61/2 (1970): 159–87; see also Walter B. Stone, "Shakespeare and the Sad Augurs," The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 52 (1953): 457–79; Don Cameron Allen, The Star-Crossed Renaissance: The Quarrel about Astrology and Its Influence in England (Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1941), 121–25; and Nicholas Popper, "The English Polydaedali: How Gabriel Harvey Read Late Tudor London," JHI 66 (2005): 351–81.

28. Henry Howard, A defensative against the poyson of supposed prophecies (London, 1583), G.iv.r-v.

29. Howard, O.i.v.

30. Howard, O.i.v-O.ii.r.

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31. For Gabriel Harvey, see Virginia Stern, Gabriel Harvey, His Life, Marginalia and Library (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1979); Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, "'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy," Past and Present 129 (Nov. 1990): 30–78.

32. Gabriel Harvey's copy of Joannes Thomas Freigius, Mosaicus: continens historiam ecclesiasticam . . . (Basle, 1583), 60. BL shelfmark C.60.f.4. "Duae famosae columnae Mathematicae."

33. Ibid., "Duae Columnae Astronomicae, a Sethi nepotibus excitatae."

34. Harvey's Freigius, 140. "Abrahamus, primus Mathematicarum plantator in Aegypto: Unde, nec ita multo post, tot Mathematica, et Physica Miracula. Hinc fere Magia omnis Naturalis."

35. Ibid., 141. "Aegiptiorum Arithmetica, et Astronomia, ab Abrahamo: Mathematicarum artium nobili professore."

36. Ibid., 158.

37. Harvey's Freigius, 166. "Radius, Instrumentum, Perantiquum, omnium Geometricorum Instrumentorum praestantissimus; vulgo Baculus Jacobi dicitur, tanquam a sancta patriarcha illo iam olim inventus sit. Ram. Geometriae lib.9. Nimirum hoc Jacobi, mathematicum inventum, superioribus avi Abrahami inventis Mathematicis addendum videbatur."

38. Thomas Hood, A Copie of the Speache: made by the Mathematicall Lecturer, unto the Worshipfull Companye of present (London, 1588), A.iiii.v-B.i.r.

39. John Chamber, A Treatise Against Iudicall Astrologie (London, 1601), 118, 121.

40. Christoper Heydon, A Defence of Iudiciall Astrology (Cambridge, 1603), Zzz.4.v 

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41. [George Carleton], AΣTPOΛOΓOMANIA: The Madnesse of ASTROLOGERS. Or an Examination of Sir Christopher Heydons Booke, Intituled A Defence of Iudiciarie Astrologie. Written nearly 20 yeares ago by G.C. (London, 1624), 56. Since there were multiple ancient figures identified with Zoroaster, it should be noted, both critics and proponents of astrology were able to claim one of them in support of their position. See Lauren Kassell's article in this volume.

42. Jean Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, trans. Beatrice Reynolds (New York: Norton, 1969), 300. For the original, see Jean Bodin, Methodus, ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris, 1566), 358–59: "Neque solum virtutes in nostris hominibus, sed etiam disciplinae pares, atque in veteribus extiterunt. est enim literarum sua quoque vicissitudo, ut primum quibusdam in locis ingeniosorum hominum experientia & labore artes oriantur, deinde incrementa suscipiant, post aliquantum in statu vigeant, tandem sua vetustate langueant, denique sensim emoriantur, & oblivione diuturna sepeliantur: vel bellorum diuturna calamitate: vel quod nimia copia (malum his temporibus valde metuendum) satietatem levissimo cuique afferre soleat: vel quod iustas Deus poenas expetit ab iis qui scientias salutares, in hominum perniciem convertunt. Nam cum disciplinae, apud Graecos sensim adolevissent, ut ad summum pervenisse crederentur, tanta mutatio postea secuta est, ut ne ipsa quidem Graecia ubi nunc est unquam extitisse videatur . . . Omitto quammultos philosophos, geometras, astrologos, peperit Aegyptus, India Aethiopia: quammulti apud Caldaeos nobiles mathematici ante fuerunt, quam ullae essent in Graecia literae: ad nostra tempora relabor, quibus multo postquam literae toto pene terrarum orbe conquierant, tantus subito scientiarum omnium splendor affulsit, tanta fertilitas extitit ingeniorum, ut nullis unquam aetatibus maior."

43. Christophe Milieu, De scribenda universitatis rerum historia (Basle, 1551). See Schmidt-Biggemann, 23–30; and Donald R. Kelley, "Writing Cultural History in Early Modern Europe: Christoph Milieu and His Project," Renaissance Quarterly 52.2 (1999): 342–65. Kelley also notes that Bacon seemed unaware of Milieu's work, though it had indeed addressed his precise concerns.

44. Reiner Reineck, Methodus Legendi Cognoscendique Historiam tam sacram tam profanam. . . . (Helmstadt, 1583), also including his oration on the dignity of mathematics. The section on the historia scholarum, is 22v-29v. For his description of the Pillars as a pedagogical tool, see within the Oratio, 36r-v.

45. Reineck, 28r.

46. Walter Ralegh, The History of the World (London, 1614), 1:199–212.

47. John Wallis, Geometriae Professoris Saviliani, Oratio Inauguralis in Auditorio Geometrico, Oxonii, habita . . . (Oxford, 1657). See b.3.r and passim. I thank Tony Mann for this reference. See also Stephens, "Livres de haulte gresse," for the continued resourcing of the Pillars through the eighteenth century.

48. William Whiston, An Essay Towards Restoring the True Text of the Old Testament; and for Vindicating the Citations made thence in the New Testament (London, 1722), clx. For Whiston, see James E. Force, William Whiston: Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). For Whiston's biblical exegesis, and especially his study of ancient Egypt and the Near East, see John Gascoigne, "'The Wisdom of the Egyptians' and the Secularisation of History in the Age of Newton," in The Uses of Antiquity: The Scientific Revolution and the Classical Tradition, ed. Stephen Gaukroger (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), 171–212.

49. Whiston; the quote is on cxxxix; his analysis is on clix-clx.

50. Others in the early eighteenth century dismissed the Pillars just as easily. For example, Vico consigned them to the "Museum of Credulity," though on the assumption that they had been attributed to Seth to exaggerate the ancient origins of the Chaldeans rather than on antiquarian criticism (see Giambattista Vico, The New Science, trans. David Marsh (London: Penguin, 2000), [49], p. 43).

51. For this point, see Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983–1993), 2: 253–62; and Dear, 116–19.



http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_ideas/v067/67.1popper.html#REF21 

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                                                 Shakespeare and Astrology   






Think of King Lear, who sinned knowingly and scoffed at the stars.

Or Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest, who defied the stars and then used them to his benefit.

The "star-cross'd" Romeo believed the poison from the apothecary was the only thing that would "shake the yoke of inauspicious stars" from his "world-wearied flesh."

And Anthony, in Julius Caesar, attributed his first defeat to the fact that the stars had forsaken him, blaming the moon's eclipse for his ultimate fall.



In all of Shakespeare's 37 plays there are more than a hundred allusions to astrology, and many of his characters' actions are said to be favored or hindered by the stars. The signs of the zodiac are mentioned in six of Shakespeare's plays, and the planets may even be blamed for disasters, especially as they wander from their spheres.

Several of Shakespeare's characters were governed by particular stars, as Posthumous was born under the benevolent planet Jupiter, and thus had a favorable destiny at the end of the play. Another character, Monsieur Parolles, was born under Mars and became known fittingly as a soldier.

The moon--known for its influence on emotions and self-image--was said to govern Elizabeth, who wept throughout the play Richard III.

These examples and many other astrological passages scattered throughout his dramatic works show that Shakespeare was at least interested in astrology and used the art abundantly in the creation of some of his most striking passages.

He probably did this because it would have an appeal to the Elizabethan audience at the time.

Whether he had a sincere interest in astrology is unknown.

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Elizabethan poetry contained a cosmic order that included stars, the planets, the sun and the earth.

There was a general fear of chaos and upsetting the order of things.

There was also a chain of being, and everything was related to that chain.

Despite Copernicus, most Elizabethans believed the earth was flat and the heavens constituted fire
and the highest perfection--light. There was a sharp division between everything beneath the sphere of the moon, and all the rest of the universe. The heavens were eternal and made of ether, while everything under the moon--such as man--was subject to decay.

Angels were the intermediary between earth and man, were purely intellectual, and thought to possess free will. However, this never conflicted with God's will. Angels could make the connection with God immediately as messengers and guardians of men.

The nine hierarchies of angels were thought to inhabit the nine spheres:



primum mobile,

fixed stars,

Saturn,

Jupiter

Mars,

Sun,

Venus,

Mercury,

and the Moon.



The stars and planets were thought to sing to the angels, which were made of brightness and assumed a body of ether when they appeared to human sight. The planets, like other parts of nature, were merely tools for God's will, and their orbit and natural rhythms were kept according to God's order.

Many times a soul was compared to a planet or sphere, with an angel revolving it. John Donne's poetry reveals this, and poets such as Shakespeare wrote about how the motions of the spheres made music, although we as humans were not supposed to be able to hear it. An example is in The Merchant of Venice, when Lorenzo says to Jessica:



   "Such harmony is in immortal souls;
    But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
    Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

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The planets thus were communicating agents from eternity to mankind, and the stars were said to dictate how everything under the moon changes. The stars were the medium between God and man, yet sometimes an Elizabethan audience may live in terror of them. This terror was mostly superstitious, as many believed the stars could actually cause bad things to happen, especially natural disasters. God's Providence, however, dictated that superstition was man inflicting beliefs upon himself, and that the stars were not harmful but beneficent, and that they were created to do good.

Most Elizabethans believed the stars and planets held some kind of power over the 'baser side' of man, and were to be used as tools of God, but they did not believe the stars held power over the supreme side of man--the immortal part. Thus man had free will and could overcome his fate by choosing good; the stars couldn't force him to do anything. Religious education or art could overcome any fate written in the stars. The Elizabethans were still afraid, however, and searched for some answer to overwrite any destiny they saw shining for them in the heavens.

For many in Shakespeare's time, planets and stars were people personified. The heavenly spheres had eternal souls. The fall of mankind hurt man, but the stars completed him, as long as he realized his two highest faculties--understanding and free will.



http://www.chartplanet.com/html/shakespeare.html

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                                                    Shakespeare's Astrology






The works of William Shakespeare are full of rich imagery from many sources. Mythology, magic and science all find a place in his texts. One of the richest sources of imagery in his works is astrology. Shakespeare uses astrological events, forecasts and metaphors extensively in his plays and poetry. This article will examine these astrological references in Shakespeare's work, focusing on the astrological components in two plays: All's Well That Ends Well, and King Lear. Shakespeare was very knowledgeable about astrology and held its practice in high regard, which can be shown by using examples from these plays, and the methods and popularity of astrology in his time.

Before we can attempt to decipher the astrological elements contained in these plays, we must have
a basic understanding of the concepts of astrology. Astrology has a complex methodology that has developed over thousands of years. The roots of astrology as practiced in Shakespeare's time go back thousands of years. As far as we can discern, astrology began as the reading of simple omens from the position, color and brightness of certain stars or planets at important times of the years. Astrology was refined and codified by the Greeks, most notably by Claudius Ptolemy in his Tetrabiblos, written in the 2nd Century A.D.

It is from this work that Renaissance and modern western astrology derive most of their basic concepts.