The History of Astrology

The material presented here originally was an introduction that I wrote to a volume of Project Hindsight translations called "The Record of the Early Sages in Ancient Greek." It consisted of fragments and quotations that either were directly from the oldest sources in Middle Eastern and Western astrology, or were paraphrases of material that *derived from these sources. Since there has recently been posted on alt.astrology9
An article called A Brief Introduction to the History of Astrology" which contains a large number of factual errors.

We at Project Hindsight thought it a good idea to present another view. We do not expect everyone to accept the views presented in this paper, but the readers should be aware that these views are close to those shared by the majority of responsible scholars in the history of astrology. (No, I am not calling all who disagree with these views irresponsible, although no doubt some may be.)

For those who may not be aware of it, Project Hindsight is a project which aims at nothing less than the translation of the entire corpus of surviving Greek astrology as well as the translation of as much of the Medieval Latin tradition as is practical. We are and will be also doing translations from Hebrew, Sanskrit, and we hope Arabic. At this point I believe that we can say that our collective work represents the largest available body of material on the History of Astrology in English today. Therefore I believe we have some idea of what we are talking about even while recognizing we may have to change our views based on what further research brings forth. We can be contacted at

The account which we present here is mostly derived from mainstream academic sources, although we will also present some of our own speculations in areas where there is no clear evidence. We do not present such speculations whimsically but only where internal evidence seems to justify them, and always they will be presented with clear indications that they are speculations.

On the other hand, because we have drawn from Western academic sources, one could object that this account does not take into consideration possible alternate views that might be derived, for example, from the study of the astrologies of India. This might be a valid objection, but we would like to assure the reader that we do not accept academic positions on the history of astrology uncritically. We try to accept only what is consistent with the internal evidence of the texts themselves. We also recognize that what we say here is not to be taken as definitive. There is much to be learned about the history of astrology, especially now that it is being carefully studied by those who are not hostile to the subject.

Based on the above considerations, it is the thesis of this author that astrology as we know it came into being only once in time and in one place; the place is Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq) and the time is to be discussed below. Having said this, another point needs to be made; what we mean by "astrology as we know it" is horoscopic astrology, i.e., astrology the intention of which is the picking of favorable times for doing things, the answering of questions, the forecasting of mundane events, and the analysis of individual destiny, all based on a peculiar instrument, the theme, genesis, or birthchart.
And that chart has a particular degree or sign which is marked as the beginning point of analysis. It is usually the degree or sign ascending, although for particular purposes the Sun, Moon, or Lot of Fortune may be used as well.