The identification of the "higher" spiritual realm with the heavens soon found expression, in the Babylonian culture, as an absorbing interest in reading portents of the night sky. The temple towers of Ancient Mesopotamia were, therefore, the first astronomical observatories, for even though astrology is different in its fundamental premises and assumptions from astronomy, it was effectively precursor to the astronomical sciences.
The ancient Babylonians became convinced that the motion of heavenly bodies, including the sun and the moon had information about the fortunes of peoples, nations and kings. Babylonian kings relied on their astrologers in decision making. Babylonian astrology passed to the Western world through the Greeks who learned the art from the East. The belief that the stars held information about the lives of ordinary people, apart from kings and their grand empires, developed after Babylonian astrology passed into the hands of the "democratic" Greeks.
In the time of the Greek empire of the Ptolemies, it came to be believed that the configuration of the heavenly bodies at the moment of an individual's birth could indicate the individual's personality and fortunes. Ptolemy, an early astronomer as well as astrologer wrote a four volume treatise on the subject of astronomy called the "tetrabiblos." Central to Ptolemy's natal astrology was the horoscope, a chart which shows the positions of the planets at the moment an individual was born. There are twelve locations or sectors in what is termed the Zodiac. Each sign representing a location in the Zodiac is assigned a 30 degrees space in the circular domain. The circular domain has its center in the place where the sun in its annual movement across the sky crosses the southern half to the northern half of the sky at the onset of spring. The northern and southern halves are separated by a celestial equator.
The place at which the sun crosses the equator on the first day of spring is called the vernal equinox. The twelve sectors of the zodiac are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces, all in order of easterly direction of the sun's motion. The signs of the Zodiac are named after the constellations in the sun's path in the sky. Because the equinox slides westward along its ecliptic origin, making a complete revolution around the sky in approximately 26 000 years, the signs and constellations today are out of step by one sign relative to their positions about 2 000 years ago. Thus the sign of Aries now occupies the constellation of Pisces.
Your horoscope shows the position of each planet (the ancients included the sun and moon in this category) in the sky by indicating its position in the Zodiac. The celestial sphere, because of the earth's rotation, turns, and the Zodiac sectors move with it across the sky to the west making a complete revolution on a daily basis.
A complete individual horoscope is represented in the form of a circle which is the center of the Zodiac sectors along with the position of the seven planets. The rules for interpretation of the horoscope are contained in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos. Modern astrologers have, however, developed simple computer programs which cast horoscopes and make interpretations. Popular astrological practice, especially in news paper columns, relies on the sun-sign astrology which uses only one element of the horoscope, the sign occupied by the sun at the individual's birth.
The writer JohnThomas Didymus is the author of "Confessions of God:The Gospel According to St. JohnThomas Didymus." ( http://www.resurrectionconspiracy.com/ ). If you have found the article informative please read the article:CAN ASTROLOGY TELL YOUR FORTUNE? on his blog: http://johnthomasdidymus.blogspot.com/2010/08/can-astrology-tell-your-fortunes.html
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