the-astrology-book

History of Western Astrology
planets on the physical body. Ficino always disapproved of the use of judicial astrology
for divinatory purposes, but devoted the entire third chapter of De vita to medical
astrology. According to Ficino, however, the planets have an influence only at the
moment of birth, while the balance of one’s life is determined by one’s own will.
The debate over judicial and medical astrology was especially animated after
the publication in 1496 of Pico della Mirandola’s Disputationes contra astrologiam. In
this work the author attacked judicial astrology, demonstrated it to be fallible and
arbitrary, lacking consensus on its basic principles, and ruled by a materialistic determinism.
He argued that astrology cannot be true because it requires an accuracy that is
impossible to obtain in interpreting the movements of the stars. But the accusation he
leveled against astrologers concerned their use of unclear and contradictory Latin
sources in place of Ptolemy, whose work on astrology Pico did consider to be accurate.
He was thus not attacking astrology itself. His Disputationes became an important
work for its influence on the debate over astrology.
A response soon came from Pico’s contemporary, Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–
1524), a teacher in various Italian universities, who found Pico’s observations unscientific
and took apart his arguments against astrology. In 1508, Luca Gaurico, author
of Tractatus astrologicus, published the Oratio de inventoribus et astrologiae laudibus to
defend astrology. About the same time, the German occultist Cornelius Agrippa
(1486–1535), in his De occulta philosophia, connected astrology with other magic arts,
such as palmistry and alchemy, and laid the groundwork for the future development of
astrology in the occultist milieu that arose during the Enlightenment.
One of the most prominent astrologers from Italy in the sixteenth century, the
Dominican Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639), wrote six books on astrology free of
the superstitious aspects caused by Arabic and Jewish influence and concordant with
the teachings of Church theologians (i.e., disapproving of astrological determinism).
He also wrote a defense of Galileo, Apologia pro Galilaeo (1616). He was twice imprisoned
on charges of heresy.
The debate over astrology became intense during the sixteenth century, fueled
by Copernicus’s (1473–1543) postulation of heliocentrism (and continued into the
next century as a result of Galileo’s advocacy of that theory). The sixteenth century
was also the time of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation, when the Church
was particularly sensitive to heresies. In 1533, at the Council of Trent, the Church
condemned judicial astrology. In 1586 and again in 1631, a bull was issued condemning
astrology, and at the end of the century the Church officially disassociated itself
from it. Galileo was denounced for his Letters on the Solar Spots (1613) and was condemned
by the Church in 1632 for his heliocentrism.
In the same period the English scientist Francis Bacon (1561–1626) demonstrated
the invalidity of astrology as commonly practiced, and suggested a system purified
of all superstitious elements and in agreement with basic scientific principles.
According to Bacon, astrology cannot be applied to the individual but can help to
predict mass changes and movements of heavenly bodies or people. Although Bacon
attacked all superstition, as a scientist of the seventeenth century he still accepted
astrology as a divinatory system.
[318] THE ASTROLOGY BOOK