Astrology is being practised in various forms all over the world, and each culture has its own special brand, such as Chinese, Hindu, Hebrew and Western Astrology. Astrology has been around since man was able to gaze into the heavens, and it is generally accepted that it developed in the ‘cradle of civilisation’: the Tigris-Euphrates valley around the year 3,000 bc.

The ancient Egyptians used astrology to help them to determine when the Nile would flood and the best times to plant crops, thus helping to plan their agricultural activities. This practice is still seen in India, where astrologers are used to predict the weather, among other things.

The Hellenistic Society in Greece had a mathematical/philosophical viewpoint that helped astrology to take on a new form. Around the 2nd century ad the Greek scientific writer Ptolemy wrote a monumental work on astrology that was divided into two parts: The Almagest and The Tetrabiblos. The Almagest dealt with the movement of the Sun, Moon and planets, while the Tetrabiblos dealt primarily with the interpretation of those movements in terms of their effect upon man, and human affairs.

The influence of Greek philosophy upon Astrology organised Astrology in a rational way that makes it acceptable to the Western mind, but also turned it into a philosophical discipline rather than the observational science that it had been until then. Previously the astrologers of the East would observe the heavens and seek correlations between the cosmic phenomena and the events on Earth. After the Greek influence, Western astrologers would simply interpret human events in terms of a set of postulates inherited from the past, causing Astrology to lose its observational discipline, and thereby brought about the birth of astronomy. When the Western half of the Roman Empire fell and we entered into the Middle Ages, much of the astrological knowledge used by the Greeks was lost.

In the 6th century ad the Muslim movement started to grow in the Mediterranean Basin. By the 8th century they had an Empire extending from Persia to the Sough of France. Spain, specifically, was under Muslim rule for several centuries. As they went into the East the Arabs came in contact with Greek Astrology. They brought their own brand of Astrology into Spain, and from there it spread all over Europe. By the 12th century Greek Astrology was making a comeback into Europe, and during the Renaissance Astrology became the ‘Queen of Sciences’ all over the continent.

During the Renaissance men like Kepler, Galileo and Copernicao were primarily great astrologers. Newton himself, although not practising, had studied the subject and had a great deal of respect for it.

Unfortunately, it was also during this time that Astrology encountered a critical moment. Seeking a greater understanding for the heavens, Kepler, Galileo and others developed scientific ideas and concepts that revolutionised and energised the scientific community. These ideas, however, were not used to explain astrological dictums. Astrology therefore, was discarded by the scientific community as a pseudoscience.

In the modern ages science rejected Astrology because it was a social science dealing with subjective information very hard to reduce to empirical data. By the time the social sciences became acceptable, the stigma that had been attached to it was already too strong to be easily dismissed. Nevertheless, the end of the 19th century gave birth to psychology and other social sciences, Astrology was a transformation in its style. It became more psychological in nature and less deterministic.

At the beginning of the 20th century Max Heindel, the founder of the Rosicrucian Fellowship, was a leading promoter of Astrology. Another great astrologer of that era was Mark Edmund Jones, who discovered the ‘Jones Patterns’, which are made up of planets configured in certain specific ways that manifest certain specific characteristics. Thereby making astrology more acceptable to the masses.

In the latter half of the 20th century, a renewal of spiritual-psychic Astrology has emerged in mainstream thinking. Many astrologers today have taken the viewpoint that Astrology is the study of theological science in harmony and within the contest of Juedo-Christian theology, since celestial events figured prominently in the writing of the Bible.