What is Astrology?

What is Astrology?

Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications.

What is Astrology?

Throughout its history, astrology has had its detractors, competitors and skeptics who opposed it for moral, religious, political, and empirical reasons.

Nonetheless, prior to the Enlightenment, astrology was generally considered a scholarly tradition and was common in learned circles, often in close relation with astronomy, meteorology, medicine, and alchemy.

What is Astrology?

Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, and Maya developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. A form of astrology was practised in the Old Babylonian period of Mesopotamia, c. 1800 BCE.

Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa is one of earliest known Hindu texts on astronomy and astrology (Jyotisha).