The Beliefs of Ancient Astrologers, Part One: An Ordered Cosmos

Transcript:

0:00
Hi everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology and today I'm really excited to begin a new series on the beliefs of ancient astrologers. So the reason that I'm doing this series is because a couple of years ago back in 2019, I began researching the history of ancient astrology from a philosophical and sort of theological perspective. I wanted to know, what did ancient astrologers believe. Even though I've been practising astrology for a while, my own faith path in the bhakti yoga tradition was getting a lot more focused and committed. And so I wanted to know what did ancient astrologers both in the east and the west believe about the universe, the soul God, astrology itself? What did they think it was? What did they think its its intended use was? Where did they think it came from? And I wanted to know that just for my own sake, because I wanted to understand how to how the my full time work and my you know, one of my my passion in life, the study and practice of astrology, fit in with or maybe diverged from my my practice of bhakti yoga. So it was a couple of years worth of research in 2019, some of that research coalesced into a few talks that I gave on the beliefs of ancient astrologers. And since then, I've been refining my understanding, it's a never ending process as a student, right? And I decided I would do a series breaking down the articles of faith that ancient astrologers had for a few reasons. One, because I get asked all the time, like, what do astrologers believe? Is it a religion? Like what what is it and what do you have to believe to do or study astrology? And I get asked that a lot I also get asked by people all the time, because I have a very committed spiritual practice. Whether it's Christianity or Sufis, Christians, Muslims, you know, Buddhists, I've had so many different people on different faith paths in life. People say, is astrology compatible with my faith path? And I think the purpose of this series is to break it down into the most basic fundamental tenants of faith or belief that ancient astrologers most likely had. There's not any text that exists in the ancient world that I've ever read from astrologers saying, This is what you have to believe to practice or do astrology, right? It doesn't, it's not like that. And we also know that over the course of 2000 years, as one of my colleagues, Jenn Zahrt likes to say there are many astrologers like plural, not just singular, right? So astrology is a very flexible, divinatory tool that gets used by many different faith traditions. But still, I believe that the more that I've looked into the roots of the Greco Roman Hellenistic Greek world, the axial age that astrology was springing forth from within, the comparative beliefs of Eastern and Western philosophers at the time that astrology was in its heyday or and really making its presence felt in the world, the more that I'm convinced that to do astrology, as it was intended to be done, and as it was understood, even in the broadest terms, there are some basic articles of faith that you do see, recurring in both the east and the west in the use and practice of astrology. So the purpose of this series is to break those beliefs down so that people not necessarily so that you have to adopt them or you have to believe everything that ancient astrologers believe, so that people can be aware of the core faith tenants of this ancient practice and whether they fit for you or not, today is really up to you. I would say to to defend some of my friends and colleagues who are atheists or agnostics. You can practice astrology without really taking up any of the beliefs of ancient astrologers. Many people will understand astrology as a kind of mythical, mythopoetic art form, people will understand it as a kind of symbolic psychological therapeutic language, which does not really require any commitment, if anything, just an openness to the mystery, right. And so by doing this series, I also don't want to appear condemning of people who the jury may well be out for many people on some of these articles of faith, and that's fine. But for people who are saying, I kind of want to know what astrologers believed there's some good reasons to know why. And I'll talk about those in a second but I also want to push back in the other direction and say that you know, There's perhaps no other religious or spiritual tradition in the world that's been as as flexible and adaptable as astrology because it's adapted to many different religions and philosophical schools of thought. And that's a credit to something about astrology itself, that's really, truly beautiful. At the same time, I would say that no matter how astrology has changed or adapted, it probably hasn't ever lost at least most of the core articles of faith that I'm going to present in this series. And if we don't adopt these articles of faith, I'm tempted to say we're not doing astrology, we're not doing, I don't want to say real astrology, that sounds a little too intense. But almost like we're not doing astrology, as it was understood and used by the vast majority of its practitioners over the past couple of 1000 years, even if there were different schools of philosophical or theological thought that were adapting or using astrology within their framework, there are still a number of core beliefs that I'm not sure we're really doing astrology, if we don't take them up. That doesn't mean that astrological language can't be used for other things, right? I'm not suggesting that the same language and tools and techniques and so forth, couldn't be applied for another agenda. I just want to make it clear also that when we start departing from these core articles of faith that I'm going to present in this series. I'm not sure we're really doing astrology any longer. But anyway, that's just a personal opinion, you know, take it or leave it.

6:37
So, a few reasons to do this series again, before I go into part one today. The first one is people always ask, you know, is astrology a spiritual or religious path. And I hope that this series sort of addresses that and shows how it is, but it's also very flexible. It's important to know to understand what ancient astrologers thought that astrology was, where they thought it was coming from, and what they thought its intended use was both practically, and let's say esoterically, or spiritually. And it's also it's nice to know these things so that I can say, do I fall in line with these beliefs? Or, where do I still have question marks? I think we're all eternal students. And so it's, it's fine. Also, if some of the beliefs of ancient astrologers we may not know if we agree with or not, right. So, this is a good way to clarify that for ourselves to look into these things. And that's why I approach the topic myself. It's also helpful to know these core faith articles that ancient astrologers had, because people will ask you, if you practice and study astrology long enough, people will literally ask so like, what is what is astrology? Why do you do it? What do you believe? People will make assumptions about what you believe. And so it's helpful to have them articulated and to clarify them for for yourself. And that's exactly why I did it. Because in my practice, and in my family life and social life, I was being asked more and more and I recognised that a certain point that I didn't know. That I had answers that I was making up that seemed legitimate to me, but I wanted to do some historical research to find out, what did the people who received this or invented it, or however, want to think about it? What did they think about it? What did they where did they think it came from and so forth. It's hard to know why we're practising or what the aim or purpose of our practices if we haven't addressed what astrology is and why we do it. What kind of universe does it claim that we live in? Right?

8:43
Okay, so the benefits. The benefits of doing this is that the more that we understand what astrology is, and why we do it, the more that also our lifestyle, the way we live, think make decisions, treat our body, our mind can start to support the core claims or faith articles of our practice. It's like once you know what you believe, then the rest of your life, you can make choices to help support your practice and astrology can become more cohesive and more supportive as a spiritual practice in your life. You know if you practice with clients, or if you study seriously as a student, astrology is going to start to refine itself in a number of different ways. You're going to be really careful about who and what you tune into as a teacher or as a text or as lectures or conferences or communities. You're going to start to know Okay, do these communities or do these teachers or do these texts or this these different philosophical takes on astrology sort of fall in line with my articles of faith? Because it there's a lot of decisions to be made out there when you're a student or a practitioner, so getting a sense of what your core beliefs are is going to refine your practice and refine your studies, it's going to help you become more deliberate and attentive about your choices as a student. And then finally, in my humble opinion, my practice has become a lot clearer and a lot more cohesive and a lot more helpful to other people, because I know what I believe, and I know what I believe the intended use and practice of astrology is meant for. So with all of that being said, the first article of faith that we are going to talk about now what again, what I've done in this series is I've broken all of these different articles of faith that ancient astrologers appear to have had in two categories. The first one today that we're going to talk about is the notion of an ordered cosmos. And I'm going to dive into that and talk about how we see that appearing in both the east and the west. And I won't have as much preliminary rambling and future videos, I'm just going to setting up the series in this one. But before I do this, what I want to say is that there are a number of source texts that I recommend, where you know, some of the heavy amount of my research came from, and I will put those as a list into the chat box. So you can see books that I recommend that all this research came from. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is also, how did I do this? Because again, it's not like, the texts themselves have a lot of very deep philosophical and theological statements being made that give you a lot of insight, and they give you the mood of what ancient astrologers believed. But there aren't as many, you know, texts that are just explicitly like, here's our doctrines or dogmas about the universe, or what we believe about the soul or God or divinity, or why we're doing this. So you kind of have to, you have to dig and figure out what were the most likely schools of philosophy that were informing the development of practice of astrology in both the east and the west? And broadly speaking, what were the because there's a lot of there's going to be a lot of variation from school to school. So I'm also looking for agreement among all of the schools. What broadly speaking, what did all of these different schools of philosophy or religious practice, believe, what did they share in? And that's how I derived these faith articles. So it's not to say that there wasn't still a lot of variation. You have the pythagoreans. You have a rich Greek philosophical tradition, right? You have the pythagoreans, you have the Platonists. You have the Hermeticists, you have the Orphics, you have the Stoics. There's something missing too, you have kind of the Aristotelian tradition that starts influencing. That's a little bit later, then, you know, in the east, you're going to have Indian philosophy that stems from the Vedic and Upanishadic tradition, and so forth. So drawing on all of it, what were the common beliefs, that's where this list comes from.

13:10
So part one today is the notion of an ordered cosmos. So for the Greeks, the concept that we lived in an ordered Cosmos was most likely foundational to the practice of astrology. So this is a faith statement. It's, it's a belief that the cosmos is, is ordered, harmonious, just good, beautiful and true. So for the Greeks, a word that's used is Harmonia. And this concept of Harmonia was pervasive as early as the last millennium BCE, which is the Millennium within which horoscopic astrology is being developed. But it's, it's, it's mentioned by several key philosophers as well. So I'll get into that in a second. But Hesiod mentions it as early as 700 BCE in his Theogony. So this is like a sort of like a historian. And, you know, he's mentioning this a long time before astrology comes about that we live in an a universe that displays harmony and order and a kind of balance.

14:22
For Heraclitus, who was a pre Socratic philosopher who lived from circa 530 to 475 BCE. Harmonia was defined by Heraclitus as an "eternal cosmological principle, whereby opposites in the material world were joined together in proper relationship with one another." And he was also the one who famously connected character and fate saying man's character is his fate. Now, you know, many people have done really deep cross comparisons between Heraclitus and early Taoist philosophy. So we're gonna see in a minute that there's counterparts to this in the east as well. So that's where this is coming from, though broadly speaking in the in the western esoteric tradition, this idea of cosmic harmony, the pythagoreans. This is going to date roughly 570 BCE to about 495 BCE also thought of Harmonia as a force that was governing the orderly fitting together of sound, and that the good of the human soul consisted in grasping and assimilating to that order. And you have to remember that the planets were thought of as music they were related to the musical scale, the music of the spheres, right. So we have this idea that Harmonia from whether you're going from all the way back to Hesiod, to Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans coming down the years, this is a pervasive idea that influences Greek thought. Plato takes it up as well. We see Plato and a lot of other Greek philosophers envisioning a Cosmos that's ordered and harmonious. So it's a combination of beauty, truth, justice, and goodness. And this is this is the highest level, then of course, within that framework, you'll hear philosophers talking about the place that chaos and strife play, but they still play a role within the larger sphere of harmony.

16:33
So now, if we go over to the east for Indian philosophers as early as the Rig Veda, which is, you know, going to be dated variously by different scholars, and I don't want to get into a big argument about how old the Vedas are, but they're old right? The parallel concept of vrta is used to denote a very similar idea. The Rig Veda contains over 400 instances of the noun vrta as well as its adjectival form. Now, as an adjective vrta means ordered, right righteous, brave, efficient, true. As an adverb, it means rightly, correctly, properly, strongly, and it also means a fixed order, determination or decision. So that has behind it the idea that the will of the gods in creation is right ordered, just correct, proper, strong, efficient, true, and also the idea that the cosmos itself hangs together because of this principle. Vrta also means order and sacred matters, sacred custom, pious work, Divine Law, order faith, and it's like the epitome of religious truth that the right or true path, and that the cosmos is, is made cohesive because of this. Interestingly, it's also associated with the images of a path, like a pathway that you walk down, much like the tao is, a seat, a wheel, a river and has astronomical associations with the wheel of the heavens, just like the Zodiac is thought of as a wheel. The Rig Veda in particular tells us that the sphere of being life and truth is regulated by vrta.

18:23
Similarly, the word in Sanskrit sat, or kind of broadly speaking, being and in truth, to kind of camped in together is also related in the Vedas to vrta and both are opposed to asat or non being an untruth and unvrta or that which lacks in meaningful order very similarly, Plato is talking about, you know, the world of shadows versus the world of truth, the understanding of the higher forms in the mind of God, which the Hermeticists take up as well. So the idea here is that there is a higher order and higher truth which philosophers, sages, Yogi's astrologers, all sorts of different esotericists are interested in that they see and believe that the universe hangs together because of this principle, expressed, you know, slightly differently in different traditions. But that's like, a core faith statement for astrologers for the past 2000 plus years. So what do ancient astrologers believe the very most basic thing, in a sense that you have to believe to do astrology, as it was believed and practised in the ancient world for and largely for the last 2000 years, is that the universe is inherently good, ordered, meaningful, and that it hangs together because of this kind of cosmic harmony.

19:58
So that's that's a kind of faith statement because you could surely make a great case for the presence of chaos, randomness, chance, meaninglessness, you know, etc, right? It's not also that ancient astrologers or ancient philosophers didn't believe in the presence of chaos or luck or chance. It's that they they saw it camped within a larger cosmic harmony. They saw it as a force that that had still had its eternal place within this ordered whole. From the Rig Veda, we also get this claim that everything emanated from a single principle, there are apparent opposites within the manifest cosmos, but because they come from the same source, they are also related together cohesively. They are complimentary, ultimately, due to this principle of ripta, which, again, is like the, the western counterpart is Harmonia. And this is something that I had the chance to read several scholarly essays about which I'll put my bibliography into the chat box. So you can check out some of these books if you're interested. But that was the one I was really deeply impressed by was how pervasive this basic view of the cosmos was in both the east and the west at the time that astrology comes about.

21:24
So at the very least, I believe that it's almost like you can't do astrology as a spiritual practice, as it was understood or intended to be used without this basic article of faith. Now, that doesn't mean again, that people won't use astrology for different that it can't be used for other purposes, or that people have to believe this otherwise, you're fake or phoney? I'm just saying, if you're looking at the spiritual sort of religious history of this practice, this is a core This is one of the core faith statements. Yeah, it's a little different from the platanus or pythagoreans or or fix to, you know, the Hermeticists and the stoics they all have their each school is very different and astrology is able to be practised in almost like transferred to a variety of different religious psychologies, you could say, but that's a core belief that doesn't seem to be there doesn't seem to be any disagreement about that that seems to be a unifying principle. So we see this notion that is in both the east and the west and ordered beautiful just good and true Cosmos we're in all apparent oppositions are ultimately ultimately bound or woven together by Harmonia or vrta, this kind of cosmic unity. We see this notion especially popular popularised in the west by many of the Presocratics as well as the Bulgarians, Plato and others, with some likely ties to Egyptian and Babylonian cosmology, and it is also clearly existing as a core value in the ancient Vedas. So for me, this has become one of the ways to broadly define what it means to practice astrology as a religious or spiritual part of my life. It is something that every day teaches me how to remember and see the cosmos as ordered, and harmonised. Even though there are the appearance of battling opposites that they all they all have their place in a greater or grander cosmic unity.

23:19
I'm not saying it's a oneness where there are no distinctions I'm saying that it's a well ordered whole. Cosmos, like the word almost like the word cosmetic, you know, to put your to put all the different pieces of makeup on your face all of your different pieces that fit together and present a beautiful whole, right? Although I will tell you if you see my daughter's trying to put chapstick on they don't fully understand yet that it goes on your lips. Because right now they'll just draw, draw it all over your face, or my face or their own. Anyway, so one of that this has become one of my core face statements. When my parents when people asked me what do astrologers believe? What is it all about? Say? Well, every day that we practice astrology, it is helping us to perceive the unity, the beauty, the order, not in a, you know, strict law, not in a restrictive sense, but the beautiful, eloquent laws of the universe. And I know science can do that for us too. I'm I have several good friends who are scientists and atheists and, I see them essentially living with a faith in return or Harmonia to because part of their they approach science many people do who don't have a belief in any God or the soul or whatever. But they approach science and they go you know, I it helps me understand that we live in a beautiful all inspiring, meaningful and intelligent universe. So there's many different things that can that can connect us to life in that way. But the point is that for ancient astrologers, the study of astrology was something that reinforced that we live in this kind of world. And that kind of world makes us eager to participate. It gives us a sense of faith and trust in our experiences and in the nature of the unfolding of events in life. So this is where we're starting today.

25:26
So, in our next episode, we will be going into a conversation, get a little bit deeper into the philosophy we'll be talking about the one and the many, the one in the many, and that all of these different schools in the East in the West also dealt with this issue of the one versus the many. We'll also talk about the reality of God divinity, the soul, the difference between spirit and matter. Let's see what else is on my list here, reincarnation, and karma, the different kind of the basics that were believed some of the things that are maybe more debatable. We'll talk a little bit about liberation and enlightenment, what ancient philosophers believed about it, we'll talk about the nature of time, we will talk about purification, austerity, and techniques or practices of ecstasy, that ancient astrologers most likely had, or that was, would have been pervasive at the time of ancient astrology. And we will talk a little bit about secular humanism versus spirituality in the ancient world, and where astrology would have fallen into that conversation, which is still a conversation today, we have some people who are, you could just broadly say, are secular humanists, versus people who are going to look at the world through the lens of divinity in one way or another. And that was in the ancient world, too. That was not, that was not something that's unique to this day, like, not everyone was walking around, you know, in robes, chanting the names of God in the ancient world, there were lots of people who didn't believe in any of this in the ancient world. And that's really interesting to to talk about. There's some other interesting things we'll talk about, like the vegetarianism and non-violence in the ancient world. We'll talk about the need to share or spread different, almost like evangelism, like the evangelism of different religious groups and what they believed, would save the soul and the importance of trying to teach or reach people to help them with suffering. So there's a lot of things on this list that we're going to go through. And I'll probably release this one or two a week. And I'm guessing it'll be like a seven or eight part series by the time it's all done. So yeah, I hope you guys enjoy it. I'd love to hear your reflections as you're listening to this series. Again, I'm not doing this because I want you all to believe something. I'm doing it because for me, understanding these broad principles of faith that ancient astrologers appeared to have, from one tradition to another, really helped clarify my own and it's really strengthened my practice. So I hope it'll do the same for you. And yeah, let me know what you thought of this first episode. And I hope you guys have a great day today. Take it easy. Bye.