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                                       HISTORY OF ASTROLOGY IN THE RENAISSANCE





    

  
                                                       This series of articles

                                                                  WAS

                                                         Originally Published

                                                                 IN THE

                                                        Mountain Astrologer

                                                     October/November 2002







Along with literature, painting and sculpture, the art of astrology reached new heights in the rebirth
of classical culture in the European Renaissance of 1450-1700.





The Renaissance philosopher and astrologer Marsilio Ficino, writing in 1492, proclaimed,


"This century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberal arts, which were almost extinct:

grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music...this century appears to have

perfected [astrology]."

Quoted in Peter & Linda Murray, The Art of the Renaissance

(London, Thames & Hudson, 1963) page 7.





Several contrasting trends were manifest in Renaissance astrology.

There was a tendency towards the adoption of Hellenistic astrological techniques and a new emphasis on the Greek astrologer Ptolemy, alongside a continuation of medieval astrology largely derived from Islam.

There were also efforts to rationalize and improve the accuracy of astrology, although many astrologers persisted in their accustomed ways.

Astrology also became more popular than ever with the adoption of printing and the dissemination of almanacs, yet it increasingly came under fire as the Renaissance gave way to the Enlightenment.