A New Book on Astrology's History 1 by Tom Hi Gang, I just read about this book on another forum. I copied a review that was posted there and thought there might be some interest. Perhaps we could drop notes about the house that say something like: "I really, really, really hope someone buys me this for Christmas." The Fated Sky by Benson Bobrick Mr Bobrick is a legitimate historian who has a strong interest in astrology: so strong that he recently signed up for lessons from John Frawley. The following review was taken from simonsays.com The man question in the Callanan household will be: should I wait for Christmas or should I just buy it now?" "Description: In a horoscope he cast in 1647 for Charles I, William Lilly, a noted English astrologer, made the following judgment: "Luna is with Antares, a violent fixed star, which is said to denote violent death, and Mars is approaching Caput Algol, which is said to denote beheading." Two years later the king's head fell on the block. "Astrology must be right," wrote the American astrologer Evangeline Adams, a claimed descendant of President John Quincy Adams, in a challenge to skeptics in 1929. "There can be no appeal from the Infinite." The Fated Sky explores both the history of astrology and the controversial subject of its influence in history. It is the first serious book to fully engage astrology in this way. Astrology is the oldest of the occult sciences. It is also the origin of science itself. Astronomy, mathematics, and other disciplines arose in part to make possible the calculations necessary in casting horoscopes. For five thousand years, from the ancient Near East to the modern world, the influence of the stars has been viewed as shaping the course and destiny of human affairs. According to recent polls, at least 30 percent of the American public believes in astrology, though, as Bobrick reveals, modern astrology is also utterly different from the doctrine of the stars that won the respect and allegiance of the greatest thinkers, scientists, and writers -- Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Arab, and Persian -- of an earlier day. Statesmen, popes, and kings once embraced it, and no less a figure than St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian, thought it not incompatible with Christian faith. There are some two hundred astrological allusions in Shakespeare's plays, and not one of their astrological predictions goes unfulfilled. The great astronomers of the scientific revolution -- Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler -- were adherents. Isaac Newton's appetite for mathematics was first whetted by an astrological text. In more recent times, prominent figures such as Churchill, de Gaulle, and Reagan have consulted astrologers and sometimes heeded their advice. Today universities as diverse as Oxford in England and the University of Zaragoza in Spain offer courses in the subject, fulfilling Carl Jung's prediction decades ago that astrology would again become the subject of serious discourse. Whether astrology actually has the powers that have been ascribed to it is, of course, open to debate. But there is no doubt that it maintains an unshakeable hold on the human mind. In The Fated Sky, Benson Bobrick has written an absolutely captivating and comprehensive account of this engrossing subject and its enduring influence on history and the history of ideas." Tom Quote Tue Oct 25, 2005 8:54 pm
2 by Sue Oh, go on Tom. Buy it now. You know you want to. I already have it on order with Amazon. They had it down as being released in December but I guess they got it out early. Hopefully I will get my copy soon. Quote Tue Oct 25, 2005 9:08 pm
3 by Tom Oh, go on Tom. Buy it now. You know you want to. Very Happy I already have it on order with Amazon. Smile They had it down as being released in December but I guess they got it out early. Hopefully I will get my copy soon. ==sigh== it's all your fault, Sue. I ordered it this evening. Supposedly I'll get it by Nov 3. I was forced- forced I tell you, forced by Sue to buy this book. Tom Quote Thu Oct 27, 2005 2:35 am
4 by Sue Oh, like you need any encouragement to buy a book, Tom. All I can say is it is just as well we are not married to each other. We'd probably be starving but we'd have plenty of books to read. Then again, if we were married at least we'd only have to buy one copy - and then fight over who got to read it first. I just got an email from Amazon this morning to say my book is on its way. Yours will probably arrive first though, since you are a lot closer. Quote Thu Oct 27, 2005 2:43 am
5 by Tom Sue, I hope your copy arrives quickly. Mine arrived a moment ago. I made a cup of tea, and, after completing this note, will sit down and read. Yes you and I would be among the poorest, but best informed individuals in the area should we have met and married. In my next life, I will buy a house with a spare room that I will turn into a library. Tom Quote Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:02 pm
6 by granny_skot speaking as a fellow bibliofile, I have a spare room, I turned it into a library. It doesnt' help, I keep buying more books and need a bigger room for them... Or maybe I should just try to make neough money to have a spare house for the books? dunno.... its an addiction, one I have no intention of giving up... Granny Quote Sun Oct 30, 2005 6:57 pm