Damian Sharp was born in Australia and was the recipient of two Literary Fellowship Awards from the Australian Council for the arts. He is also the author of Simple Feng Shui and Simple Chinese Astrology and has published short stories in periodicals such as the Chicago Review. He lives in San Francisco.

CHAPTER 1

The Horoscope and the Signs of the Zodiac

Astrology is both a science and an art. It is a symbolic representation of all of theelements—religious, spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical, invisible and visible—thatexist in the universe and come together in diverse combinations that account for individualhuman beings and the forces that shape and act upon them. We are microcosmsmanifesting the macrocosm, an ancient concept set forth in the Bible as Man made in theimage of God. Astrological interpretation relies heavily on an informed intuition and afamiliarity, gained from practice and time, with the complex and multilayered meaningsunderlying its seemingly simple symbology. Interpreting a horoscope is partly science,partly intuitive discipline, and ultimately a synthesis of both. The particular reading willreflect the personality and outlook of the astrologer in much the same way as apsychologist's analysis is also colored by his or her personal views.

Astrology tells us that as individuals we are peculiar and particular, while at the same timea direct manifestation of a cosmic whole to which we are inexorably linked. It reminds usthat we are bound to the karmic wheel, that we come into the world with special gifts aswell as certain burdens and travails. On the surface it can appear to tell us that ourfortunes and our personalities are preordained, that our fates are completely in the handsof the gods. But a man's character is his fate, the Greek philosopher Heracleitus tells us,and in the end there is no disguising or excusing who we are.

Correctly understood and applied, a horoscope is a precise instrument based on realforces, events, and relationships occurring in nature. It is, most importantly, a diagram ofan individual's purpose in life and a symbolic language that describes how differentfactors—signs, planets, and houses—are combined to produce a meaningful whole. Eachhoroscope is a complex combination of factors, a graphic depiction of a particulardetermining and synchronistic moment in time and space when the bodies of the solarsystem form a unique pattern. The art of astrological analysis lies in intuitivelysynthesizing all the relationships in the horoscope to create a complete and integratedpicture or profile.

In reading any horoscope, it is important to remember that the energies symbolized by theplanets and signs represent birth potentials that the individual may or may not choose toactualize in the manner described. Age, sex, socioeconomic conditions, education,environment, spiritual development, and many other factors contribute to the ways inwhich we express our natal energies.

Astrology does not preclude personal willpower, selfdetermination, and dynamic actionupon those very forces that seem to have cosmically preordained who we are and whatwe are to become. What it presents us with are the lessons we need to learn within thisparticular turn of the Great Wheel, along with our innate potential, in order to become andultimately be. How well we learn these lessons and gain from them is up to us asindividuals. We are all, in a sense, Odysseus using all of his courage, guile, strength, andwits to defy Poseidon (the god of the sea), of whom he'd made an enemy, in order tosimply get home. How well the lessons are learned is not the responsibility of the teacher,who simply presents them for what they are and moves on. It relies solely on theintelligence, receptivity, perception, and tenacity of the pupil.

Constructing a Horoscope or Astrological Chart

You may find it useful to obtain a horoscope for your time and place of birth so you canlearn the principles presented in this book by studying your own natal, or birth, chart.Constructing an individual horoscope is a fairly complex process, involving precisecalculations, the exact time, date, and place of birth, latitude and longitude, an ephemeris,a table of the houses, a list of time changes, and other tools. In this day and age,however, there are many Internet sites and computer software programs for castingastrological charts. Several books on casting techniques are also available, among themAlan Leo's Casting the Horoscope and Margaret Hone's Modern Textbook of Astrology.The American Federation of Astrologers (AFA) also puts out an excellent series of mathhandbooks.

The Origins of Astrology

In our earliest art, that of the Upper Paleolithic, between 32,000 to 12,000 years ago,depictions of the heavens, of the Sun, Moon, and the stars, are totally absent. Our remoteCro- Magnon ancestors were not stargazers beyond an awareness of the moon and itsphases, depicted, perhaps, in bas-relief cave carvings of women holding bison horns withthirteen incisions and as marks on antlers and bones found on the cave floors. Thesepeople were basically earthbound in their preoccupations, concerned with their immediateand animistic world. For them, magic and power resided not in the sky above, but in theearth, in deep caves in which these ancient artists chose to render, by the meager light ofcrude lamps and small fires, remarkably beautiful, sophisticated, and accurately detaileddepictions of the fauna that both sustained and threatened their existence: aurochs, bison,horses, ibex, and reindeer; mammoth, rhino, lion, and the cave-dwelling bear. Thesymbolic meaning beyond their naturalistic representations spoke of the creatures'inherent personalities and attributes, as well as a host of abstract ideas associated withthem (like speed, agility, courage, strength, nurturing, fierceness, cunning). Chineseastrology is in part based on this kind of observation. What did these creatures representto our ancestors, who knew and observed them so intimately? It does seem that theimages on the cave walls are not just the beginning of art, but the beginnings of writtenlanguage, visual symbols drawn from nature conveying meanings beyond their simple andmundane representations.

The deep cave is the realm of the shaman, of the vision quest, of the underworld wherenature's mysterious power, the miracle of existence itself—birth, being, death, andregeneration—reside. It was the role of the shaman-artist to penetrate this dark realm ofthe invisible and make contact with and capture this power, conjuring the animals andtheir attributes from out of the living rock in which their spirit-essence dwelled and snaringthem as though art was the hunter's trap. The creation of these magnificent works of artwas usually part of a form of ritualistic magic.

With the end of the last Ice Age, hunter-gatherer cultures were gradually replaced bynomadic tent-dwelling herders with their domesticated flocks and agrarian and city-buildingsocieties as civilization began its long emergence. Having solved certainearthbound problems and reduced mundane concerns, the philosophically minded beganto look upward to observe and ponder the glowing bodies in the firmament and their cyclicmovements across the sky, which observers came to correlate with the changes of theseasons and other earthly events. In observing how the seasons of the year and themovement of the stars and planets followed fixed and correlating laws of change andtransformation, they identified a possible relationship between the earth and the sky and akey to understanding the nature of all beings in time and space. Determining the meaningof the influence of the stars and planets became the role of the astrologer-priests. Thus,astrology came into being as a practice that belonged to the priesthood and the royaltythey served.

Almost all ancient peoples from the Mesolithic period onward had some system of readingthe heavens for divinatory purposes. The belief and study of celestial omens without theuse of a chart, or a map of the stars, do not constitute what we call astrology. The mostcommonly held belief among scholars is that astrology came into being in Mesopotamia(the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is modern Iraq). Around 6000B.C.E., Babylonians observed the planets as "wanderers," and early Babylonian recordsattest to the existence of astrology as we know it today, that is, a horoscopic astrologyused for predicting the future, answering questions, and analyzing an individual's destinybased on the time and place of birth. Initially, Mesopotamian astrology was much like thatof other cultures: a simple reading of the heavens for omens that might effect or foretellhappenings on earth. However, the Mesopotamians soon developed a system thatidentified recurring patterns in the night sky and their direct correspondence to humanevents. The first known astrological texts, written in cuneiform on clay tablets, are from theold Babylonian period around the time of Hammurabi, the king who introduced the firstwritten rule of law known as the Hammurabi Code and quoted in the Old Testament—"Aneye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Like the peoples of many other cultures, theMesopotamians believed that the stars and planets were in fact gods and goddesses.Venus was Ishtar, one of their major deities. The Egyptians identified the constellationOrion with Osiris, the god of the underworld. The Mesopotamians however were unique intheir view of the stars and planets as being indicators of divine will at any given moment intime, the here and now, thus making them the originators of astrology as we understand ittoday.

The evolution of astrology seems to have gone through three major phases. First camethe development of lore surrounding the observation of omens. Then came thedevelopment of a Zodiac, without personal horoscopes, of twelve signs through which thetransits of Jupiter were recorded at the rate of one sign per year. From this, some believe,came the basis for the Chinese system of assigning each year to a zodiacal animal sign(the Chinese animal signs have a direct correlation to Western zodiacal signs). Thencame horoscopic astrology, involving the casting of personal birth charts.

In the fifth century B.C.E., the Chaldeans developed rules for erecting royal horoscopes.April 29, 409 B.C.E. is the oldest known Babylonian horoscope for an individual. It wasalso Chaldean astrologers who were the "Three Kings," or Magi, who traveled from Persiato pay homage to the newborn Christ with their symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, andmyrrh—gold for royalty, frankincense for divinity, and myrrh for death (embalming) andhealing—meaning that Christ was king, god (in Buddhist terms, a Bodhisattva), andphysician. The Magi, or astrologer-priests, held special positions of power in Babyloniansociety.

The Babylonians became particularly adept, based on the records of their observations, ataccurately predicting the positions of the planets at any given time in the future.Systematic eclipse records were kept from 747 B.C.E. into the Hellenistic period.

With the conquest of Persia and Egypt by Alexander the Great, Babylonian ideas, inparticular astrology, were incorporated into Persian, Egyptian, and Hellenic cultures. In331 B.C.E., following Alexander's conquests, Mesopotamian astrology was introduced intoGreece. Around 280 B.C.E., Berossus, a Chaldean astrologer and historian, directlyrelated events to star movements and worship.

Greek astrology took a more personal form than that of Mesopotamia, with the assignmentof mythological correspondences to the Zodiac and planets. Indeed, natal astrology grewin popularity after the Greeks introduced their humanistic and individualistic ideas intoChaldean star lore. The Stoics appear to have been particularly receptive to it, and themedical ideas of Hippocrates were apparently influenced by it.

Around 280 B.C.E., Rome began to be strongly affected by Greek astrology. In 135B.C.E., Posidinius furthered astrology among Roman intellectuals. Later, it was opposedby Cicero and the Epicureans. In 70 B.C.E., the Greeks set up the firstknown personalhoroscope based on the exact time of birth, thus deriving the Ascendant. In 30 B.C.E., theEmperor Augustus had his horoscope erected and interpreted by Thrasyllus, establishinga precedent that was followed by later Roman emperors.

According to some theorists, the birthplace of astrology as we have defined it waspharaonic Egypt. In 1375 B.C.E., the pharaoh Akhenaton established monotheistic sunworship, only to be overthrown by the priesthood and the army, which feared that thismonumental change in the established order of Egyptian society made Egypt vulnerableto a Hittite invasion armed with a new weapon, the iron sword. That the Egyptians wereaccomplished astronomers we have no doubt. The accurate alignment of the pyramidsand other temples to certain fixed stars clearly attests to this. But it is a later Egypt, oneinfluenced by Babylonian ideas brought first by the Persians and then by the Greeks, thatbecame the primary source of horoscopic astrology.

The Egyptian texts referred to in later astrological literature were written in Greek. WhenAlexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire and Egypt and penetrated intonorthwestern India, Greek became the dominant language from North Africa to the farreaches of Central Asia. Even the Bactrian peoples of what is today Afghanistan andPakistan had Greek-speaking rulers into the early centuries of the Common Era. Ancientstatues of Buddha draped in Greek togas (known as "Hellenic Buddhas") are still relativelycommon (or were, as many were destroyed as pagan idols by the Taliban in Afghanistan).As a result, the Babylonian beliefs embodied in Egyptian astrology traveled easily to India.

In the West, astrology reached a high point with the Greeks and the Romans. Around 10C.E., the poetastrologer Manilius wrote his Astronomicon, the first major Greek work onastrology, and astrology was embraced by several of the Mediterranean mystery religions,some of which had come from the East. In 140 C.E., Ptolemy of Alexandria published hisTetrabiblos, the first major textbook on astrology. In the fourth century C.E. after Rome'sconversion to Christianity, St. Augustine led an early Christian attack on astrology. Itexperienced a resurrection under the reign of the emperor Constantine after JuliusFirmicus Maternus published his Mathesis supporting astrological theories and beliefs.The fall of the Roman Empire saw the decline of astrology in the West.

During the Middle Ages, the Arabs kept divinatory astrology alive, and it was reintroducedto medieval Europe by Islamic scholars in the universities of Spain during the Moorishconquests. Around 800 C.E., Charlemagne became fascinated and influenced by the craftand helped further promote it in the West. In the eighth century, a school of astrology wasestablished in Baghdad, and Chinese astrology was developed by Han Yu and Li HsuChung.In the ninth century, Sabian star worship took firm root in Mesopotamia andAlbumasar published his Introduction to Astrology.

In England during the twelfth century, after journeying to the Middle East, Adelard of Bathwas instrumental in reintroducing astrology to the Christian West. Later, St. ThomasAquinas helped reconcile astrology with the teachings of the Church. Universities inFrance and Spain then adopted its study and established chairs in its name. During theRenaissance, the astrologer/physician Paracelsus and others furthered its acceptanceand development. Astrology became associated with alchemy, magic, and other occultarts. But by the mid-1540s, the Copernican view of the universe was seen as a scientificrefutation of geocentric astrology. In 1555, Nostradamus published the first of his"prophecies," and soon after Catherine de' Medici and several other rulers of the periodbecame passionate believers in astrology. The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who wasalso Johannes Kepler's teacher, secretly practiced astrology, and later Kepler actuallysought to develop a new astrology. But all of this activity ultimately did little to stemastrology's fall into disrepute. In 1666, astrology was officially banished as superstitionfrom the French Academy of Sciences.

Astrology's hidden appeal and knowledge, however, remained irresistible, like a forbiddenfruit. In the seventeenth century, a Benedictine monk and teacher, Placidus de Titus,published a series of important astrological works, which were widely well received. Hewas followed by the court astrologer and physician to Louis XIV of France, Morin deVillefranche, whose Astrologia Gallica also had a profound and widespread effect. InEngland, William Lilly published a major literary work on astrology in 1675 andsuccessfully predicted the 1676 fire in London. However, astrology continued to bepracticed mainly by charlatans and during the Age of Enlightenment was basically drivenunderground.

In 1781, William Herschel discovered Uranus. The Vagabond Act of 1824 officiallyoutlawed the practice of astrology in England. Four years later, Raphael (Robert GrossSmith) published his Manual of Astrology. Along with the discovery of Uranus, thediscovery of Neptune in 1846 enabled astrologers to resolve some of the old ambiguitiesof their craft.