Before astrology took its present mathematical form, astrologers used as their material for prediction the stars or constellations which happened to be rising or setting at the time selected, or were upon the same meridian, or had the same longitude, as such constellations. One of the earliest of these astrological writers was Zeuchros of Babylon, who lived about the time of the Christian era, some of whose writings have been preserved to us. From these it is clear that the astrologers found twelve signs of the zodiac did not give them enough play. They therefore introduced the "decans," that is to say the idea of thirty-six divinities—three to each month—borrowed from the Egyptian division of the year into thirty-six weeks (of ten days), each under the rule of a separate god. Of course this Egyptian year bore no fixed relation to the actual lunar months or solar year, nor therefore to the Jewish year, which was related to both. But even with this increase of material, the astrologers found the astronomical data insufficient for their fortune-telling purposes. Additional figures quite unrepresented in the heavens, were devised, and were drawn upon, as needed, to supplement the genuine constellations, and as it was impossible to recognize these additions in the sky, the predictions were made, not from observation of the heavens, but from observations on globes, often very inaccurate.
Earlier still we have astrological tablets from Assyria and Babylon, many of which show that they had nothing to do with any actual observation, and were simply invented to give completeness to the tables of omens. Thus an Assyrian tablet has been found upon which are given the significations of eclipses falling upon each day of the month Tammuz, right up to the middle of the month. It is amusing to read the naïve comment of a distinguished Assyriologist, that tablets such as these prove how careful, and how long continued had been the observations upon which they were based. It was not recognized that no eclipses either of sun or moon could possibly occur on most of the dates given, and that they could never occur "in the north," which is one of the quarters indicated. They were no more founded on actual observation than the portent mentioned on another tablet, of a woman giving birth to a lion, which, after all, is not more impossible than that an eclipse should occur in the north on the second day of Tammuz. In all ages it has been the same; the astrologer has had nothing to do with science as such, even in its most primitive form; he has cared nothing for the actual appearance of the heavens upon which he pretended to base his predictions; an imaginary planet, an imaginary eclipse, an imaginary constellation were just as good for his fortune-telling as real ones. Such fortune-telling was forbidden to the Hebrews; necessarily forbidden, for astrology had no excuse unless the stars and planets were gods, or the vehicles and engines of gods. Further, all attempts to extort from spirits or from inanimate things a glimpse into the future was likewise forbidden them. They were to look to God, and to His revealed will alone for all such light.
"When they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God?"
The Hebrews were few in number, their kingdoms very small compared with the great empires of Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon, but here, in this question of divination or fortune-telling, they stand on a plane far above any of the surrounding nations. There is just contempt in the picture drawn by Ezekiel of the king of Babylon, great though his military power might be—
"The king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver."
And Isaiah calls upon the city of Babylon—
"Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels: let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee."
Isaiah knew the Lord to be He that "frustrateth the tokens of the liars and maketh diviners mad." And the word of the Lord to Israel through Jeremiah was—
"Thus saith the Lord. Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them."
It is to our shame that even to-day, in spite of all our enlightenment and scientific advances, astrology still has a hold upon multitudes. Astrological almanacs and treatises are sold by the tens of thousands, and astrological superstitions are still current. "The star of the god Chiun" is not indeed openly worshipped; but Saturn is still looked upon as the planet bringing such diseases as "toothache, agues, and all that proceeds from cold, consumption, the spleen particularly, and the bones, rheumatic gouts, jaundice, dropsy, and all complaints arising from fear, apoplexies, etc."; and charms made of Saturn's metal, lead, are still worn upon Saturn's finger, in the belief that these will ward off the threatened evil; a tradition of the time when by so doing the wearers would have proclaimed themselves votaries of the god, and therefore under his protection.
