A New Book on Astrology's History

1
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


2
Oh, go on Tom. Buy it now. You know you want to. :D 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.

3
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

4
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. :lol:

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.

5
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

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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