by Imperium Astrologiae
Astrology played a significant role in the academic setting of Italy during the fourteenth century. The universities of Bologna, Padua, and Pavia were particularly renowned for their focus on astrology during this period. Later on, its development stopped around 1600 due to the rise of the Inquisition and Catholic orthodoxy. Astrology lost its academic importance, and its development was impeded. It was believed that the practice of natural divination posed a challenge to a worldview dominated by the divine presence and that nature no longer acted as a mediator between humans and God.
Nevertheless, astronomy and astrology continued to share a common path, with scholars regarding astrology as a practical application of astronomy. This view was exemplified by the enthusiastic reception of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus, which simplified astrology calculations. However, the Age of Enlightenment brought about a change in attitude, with encyclopaedic works starting to highlight the distinction between natural astrology, which deals with phenomena subjected to scientific investigation, and judicial astrology, which studies events from a predictive perspective. From then on, astrology was increasingly viewed as a superstition, while astronomy began to ascend, marking the decline of astrological thinking in academic circles.
I have simplified to the farthest a much more complex process from the historical point of view. Still, despite the advent of scientific thought and its seemingly linear solutions, astrology – particularly its non-divinatory aspect – can complement scientific thought by accounting for the observer’s role in forming the objective phenomenon. This is a fundamental aspect of what is often referred to as magical thinking, as highlighted in this post.
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