Book Review: Astrology since Antiquity: A History of Western Astrology
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ASTROLOGY SINCE ANTIQUITY A History of Western Astrology, ii: The Medieval and Modern Worlds. Nicholas Campion (Continuum, London, 2009). Pp. xx + 371. $29.95 (paperback). ISBN: 978-1-84725-224-1.Johannes Kepler - not known for philosophical timidity or fabulous wealth - famously described astrology as "a foolish daughter" whose "wise mother", astronomy, would go hungry without her. 'The salaries of mathematicians are so seldom and small", Kepler complained, "that the mother would certainly starve if the daughter did not earn anything". Yet Kepler's famous grumble features a telling twist. From the "rowdy foolishness" that rang in his ears, Kepler regarded astrology as the very source of astronomy. "If no one had ever been so foolish as to hope to learn future things from the heavens in the first place", he wrote, "so would you, astronomer, never have been so clever as to think that the course of the heavens should be made known for the glory of God" (GW, iv, 161.10-23).In this survey, Nicholas Campion reveals another layer to the criticism astrology suffered by seventeenth-century scholars such as Kepler. The real source of disapproval, Campion argues, derived from what were seen as "the abuses of the ordinary astrologers" (p. 140), those middle and lower class astrologers who roused the ire of their elite contemporaries. Consisting mainly of university-trained philosophers and theologians, the high astrologers would by the end of the century be dramatically reduced in numbers. Although astrology has been largely excluded from educated discourse ever since, Campion argues that we should continue to recognize the cultural relevance of astrology even to the present.Campion opens this volume by discussing an earlier collapse of astrology in the fifth century. He soon turns to the revival of Carolingian Europe, where we encounter a renewed appreciation of astrology as an intellectual discipline. Campion explores the meaning of medieval astrology as a technology of power, arguing that the rediscovery of ancient authors in the thirteenth century, especially Aristotle, "arrived on the back of a demand for astrological texts" (p. 44). The medieval mission to reform astrology by removing Arabic 'superstitions' and returning to Ptolemy, Campion tells us, recalls the critical reception of Babylonian astrology by ancient Greece. This reception would launch a long dispute over the difference between artificial and natural forms of divination that continues to divide astrologers today. By the eighteenth century, judicial astrology had become a common target for scholars who claimed that it had been "submerged beneath a mass of ... bizarre and ridiculous connotations" (p. 191). Campion notes that although these elements have found a place in popular culture, their ridicule by religious and scientific authorities over the last three centuries marks the modern collapse of astrology, after which "the world was essentially seen as material" (p. 180).According to Campion, leading authors of this campaign were "the three famous continental astrologers", Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo, who reduced the arsenal of ancient philosophy "to the notion of an underlying world order" (p. 155). At once reformers and revolutionaries, these authors are regarded exclusively for their work in astrology, however, which leads us to ask how Campion might relate their astrological efforts to their many other areas of interest. The result is an incomplete impression of a critical turn in the history of astrology, coupled with a vague scolding of those historians who "have done their best to ignore" its forgotten riches. …