Scribd
Upload
101 views2 pages

Astrology

The centaurs in the Forbidden Forest can read the future in the stars through their practice of astrology. They predict something ominous when commenting on the brightness of Mars, involving anger, violence, and bloodshed. Astrology differs from astronomy in that astronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects, while astrology seeks to explain their influence on earthly life. The Babylonians first kept records of planetary movements and assigned meanings to planets like Mars, Venus, and Saturn based on their appearances, believing events in the heavens reflected events on Earth. While astrology was once intellectually respected, it is now popular but lacks respectability, with many skeptics, including some students at a school of witchcraft and wizardry.

Uploaded by

Sanjeet Kotarya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
101 views2 pages

Astrology

The centaurs in the Forbidden Forest can read the future in the stars through their practice of astrology. They predict something ominous when commenting on the brightness of Mars, involving anger, violence, and bloodshed. Astrology differs from astronomy in that astronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects, while astrology seeks to explain their influence on earthly life. The Babylonians first kept records of planetary movements and assigned meanings to planets like Mars, Venus, and Saturn based on their appearances, believing events in the heavens reflected events on Earth. While astrology was once intellectually respected, it is now popular but lacks respectability, with many skeptics, including some students at a school of witchcraft and wizardry.

Uploaded by

Sanjeet Kotarya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Astrology

W hen the centaurs of the Forbidden Forest comment on the


brightness of the planet Mars, they’re doing more than making
a casual comment about the beauty of the evening sky. Their words
are a veiled prediction of something ominous to come, involving anger,
violence, and perhaps bloodshed and revenge. These centaurs practice
astrology and can read the future in the stars.

Astrology should not be confused with astronomy, although both


share the same Greek root, astron, which means “star.”

Astronomy is the
scientific study of the heavenly bodies, such as stars, planets, moons,
comets, and meteors; astrology is a more fanciful pursuit that seeks to
explain and interpret the influence of the heavenly bodies on earthly
life. Both disciplines emerged in ancient Babylonia (modern-day Iraq)
more than 7,000 years ago when sky watchers first began to keep accurate
records of the movements of the sun, moon, and stars.

One of their earliest observations was that although most of the stars remained
in the same positions relative to one another, a handful did not. Along
with the sun and the moon, these so-called “wandering stars,” which
the ancients thought to be the homes of gods, traveled across a narrow
band of sky known as the zodiac. Today we know that these wanderers
are not actually stars but planets (“planet” means “wanderer” in Greek).

In time, the Babylonians assigned meanings and resident deities to


the planets based on their appearance. For example, Mars, which has a
distinct reddish glow, was considered fiery and bloody and became
identified with the god of war (Nergal for the Babylonians, Ares for the
Greeks, and Mars to the Romans); Venus, which outshines every star in
the sky but can disappear for six weeks at a time, was the bringer of love, faithful or
fickle; and Saturn, which appears to roll across the sky
more slowly than the other visible planets because it is the most distant,
was associated with evil, old age, despondency, and death. Only the five
planets visible to the naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn)
were known, and all were thought, along with the sun and moon, to revolve
around the Earth, which was then believed to be the center of the
universe.

The Babylonian sky watchers were the first to keep good records of all of the celestial events they
observed. They drew the first star maps around 1800 B.C.

In addition to observing the shifting patterns of the cosmos,


Babylonian sky watchers tried to correlate what they saw with events on
Earth, such as earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters. Their
reasoning was simple: They believed that everything in the universe was
interconnected and that events in heaven must therefore reflect, or even
foretell, events on Earth. For instance, the appearance of a comet, the
most unpredictable of all celestial events, might forebode a major occurrence,
such as the death of a king. More common events—such as
full moons, eclipses, the appearance of a halo around the moon, or theconvergence of two
or more planets—were less ominous but could stillherald news of a famine, storm, flood,
epidemic, or other disaster.

Astrology today occupies a peculiar position. Although it retains


none of the intellectual respectability it once had, its popularity is vast,
and many people take astrological advice as profound truth. Still, skeptics
abound. In fact, several of the most skeptical people we can think
of happen to be students at a certain school of witchcraft and wizardry.

You might also like