0:00

Hey. My name is Chris Brennan

0:02

are listening to the Astrology Podcast.

0:04

To me today are historians Nicholas

0:06

Campion and Patrick Curry and we're

0:08

going to be talking about Patrick's

0:11

landmark book on seventeenth century astrology

0:13

titled Prophecy and Power Astrology and

0:15

Early Modern England, which was just

0:17

recently republished. Ah, so he, Nick

0:19

and Patrick welcome to the show!

0:22

I think you know Chris. X

0:25

yet. Thank. You so much

0:27

for joining me today, So this

0:29

is an exciting moment to be

0:31

talking with you both because this

0:33

was a pretty significant book in

0:36

terms of the history of astrology.

0:38

In in terms of historical discussions

0:40

about astrology, especially in an academic

0:42

context, it was published in the

0:44

mid to late Nineteen eighties, and

0:47

you've just decided to republish it

0:49

on after all of these years,

0:51

right? Yeah.

0:54

Sure, we're doing a second. I've

0:56

in addition. Through. The

0:59

surface and to press mean it's

1:01

it's substantial change. We just have

1:03

a new forward and that Patrick's

1:05

text is completely unchanged. We thought,

1:07

don't tamper with something which works

1:10

so well. So.

1:12

What year was the book originally published? Or

1:16

the book was originally published in

1:18

the Nineteen Eighty Nine. And.

1:22

Shall. I give you a little bit of the

1:24

background her employees I'd love to hear. Well.

1:27

I did my phd in

1:29

the department of History and

1:31

Philosophy of Science. And

1:34

University College London. in Nineteen Eighty Seven.

1:36

I finish that, Nineteen Eighty Seven. And

1:38

so I basically turned my thesis, not

1:40

all of it, but most of it

1:43

into the book on Know on the

1:45

same subject. And that was our Profits

1:47

In Power came to be published by

1:49

Polity Press and Nineteen Eighty Nine. And.

1:53

Course. That was nearly forty years ago, so

1:55

it must have some life in it because

1:58

it's to spin who obstinate. Second Edition. thanks

2:00

to the Society of Center Press

2:02

with a new forward by Darrell

2:04

Rutkin, a really excellent new forward.

2:08

And so that's

2:10

how it came about from my point of view. Yeah,

2:13

and in the meantime, so much scholarship

2:16

has been done on astrology. And

2:18

Nick, you're also landmark two

2:21

volume history of astrology came out in

2:23

the late 2000s, titled

2:26

a history of Western astrology volumes one

2:28

and two. Which covered part

2:31

of that period, but also you have

2:33

a broader history of astrology as well.

2:37

Yeah, when prophecy and

2:39

power came out, I

2:41

was, we started my

2:43

academic career. So Patrick and I met

2:46

probably around 1980 and Patrick

2:48

was just getting

2:51

into doing his PhD, which I didn't do until 1997.

2:56

But we both had a shared love of

2:58

the history of astrology. And back then in

3:00

London, there was a

3:02

nucleus of people

3:04

who weren't academics, who were sometimes

3:08

astrologers, who were beginning to realize

3:10

that it was necessary

3:13

to understand astrology's history. And there

3:15

were several other seminal

3:18

academic works coming out. So I

3:22

began to work on my book around

3:24

the mid 90s. And it turned

3:27

in, yes, to a rather

3:29

massive book on the history of

3:31

Western astrology, because I find it difficult

3:33

to know what to leave out, because once you start to look at the topic, it

3:37

has so many tentacles that reach so many

3:40

areas. I know what

3:42

it's like to write a massive book. I know that

3:44

issue you struggled with.

3:46

Yeah, with your holistic astrology. Yeah.

3:49

And I think that's a very

3:51

interesting question. Was he? Yeah. So,

3:56

yeah, and then you

3:58

published that finally in 2008. in

4:00

2009. What

4:03

influenced you about Patrick's book or what did

4:05

you feel was significant about it now in

4:07

retrospect that led you to want

4:09

to republish it, Nick, as part of the

4:12

Sophia Center Press? Well,

4:14

historically, it was the

4:16

case that astrology

4:20

by many academics was

4:22

regarded as somehow a

4:25

taboo and even

4:28

a taboo to talk about it on

4:30

occasion. And so

4:32

histories of astrology would frequently

4:36

have some sort of ritual denunciation

4:39

of it. And the great example

4:41

was the denunciation of astrology as

4:44

a wretched subject. And

4:47

a move against this began

4:49

with important works like Keith Thomas's

4:51

Religion and Decline and Magic and Bernard

4:53

Kapp's epic book on

4:57

16th, 17th century Orman acts. And

5:01

so Patrick's book almost crystallized

5:04

this process by saying we

5:06

can look at astrology in terms of

5:09

what astrologers were doing, their own

5:11

what's been called a universe of

5:13

discourse, without seeking

5:17

the need to project modern debates

5:19

back and talk about astrology

5:21

as a superstition or serious science, but look

5:23

at it in its own terms, what was

5:25

happening. So that's what inspired me. And that's

5:27

what I took forward in my own work.

5:32

And can I speak to that? Yeah.

5:35

Yeah, for me, I

5:40

wanted to refuse the temptation of historians

5:45

and sociologists and succumb to for so long to

5:48

second-guess astrologers, say

5:51

something like, well, they thought they

5:53

were doing this, but actually

5:55

they were doing this other

5:57

thing which was delusional. because

6:00

it seemed grossly unfair to me because in

6:04

the present time that could be, we could all be

6:06

in that position. So there

6:09

should be a symmetry of approach to people

6:11

in the past and to people in the

6:13

present. And that position was

6:15

being taken up at the time I was working back

6:17

in the 80s by Social Studies of Science. We

6:22

said, well, we're going to have to bracket

6:24

the question of what actually is scientifically true

6:28

and observe how scientists behave

6:30

and what their practices are

6:33

and how they come up with the definition

6:35

of what's true, whether it is true or

6:37

not. So that was influential for

6:39

me because I was in the Department of History

6:41

and Philosophy of Science. The

6:43

other thing that played into my determination

6:46

to be even-handed was E.P.

6:50

Thompson's, the

6:52

great socialist historian E.P. Thompson's

6:55

work, especially

6:57

his book, Making of the English Working

6:59

Class, which evolved into

7:01

something called History from Below. And

7:04

in the introduction to his book, he said

7:06

he is determined to rescue the laboring

7:10

poor, the urban working classes,

7:13

the followers of prophets at

7:16

the time from the enormous

7:18

condescension of posterity. And

7:21

I thought, absolutely, that's it. Astrologers,

7:23

I just, in a sense, added

7:25

astrologers to the list of people

7:28

who had been treated with

7:30

the enormous condescension of superior

7:32

thinking, right thinking in their

7:34

own estimate, posterity.

7:38

So those two influences came together

7:40

very nicely and then pelled

7:43

me to say,

7:45

okay, let's take astrologers

7:48

seriously. Let's take astrology as

7:50

seriously as they did and

7:53

then look at what

7:55

they did, what meant

7:57

a lot to them, how they behaved, how they thought.

8:00

thought. That was very helpful. Yeah,

8:03

and it seems different. It seems like there's

8:05

a shift that occurred around that time where

8:08

earlier histories of astrology

8:10

sometimes, in order

8:12

to maintain academic credibility, would sometimes

8:15

have to pepper their accounts of

8:17

the history with frequent reminders that

8:19

they don't believe in the

8:21

subject or that they found it absurd. Like

8:24

Bouchle-Clerk's famous work on Greco-Roman

8:27

astrology from 1899 where he

8:29

has jokes throughout it about

8:32

how astrology is not as

8:34

silly or other things like that. It seems like

8:36

there was a shift at some point where

8:40

that started becoming unnecessary over the past

8:42

40 years. Yeah, I

8:44

mean, the general term at the time for

8:46

that sort of history was wiggish history. In

8:49

other words, the idea that there was a

8:51

predetermined goal of history, which

8:53

is complete scientific knowledge

8:55

and therefore astrology

8:58

fails that test. It

9:01

wasn't moving in the right

9:03

direction supposedly. And as

9:06

a result, the same historians you just

9:08

mentioned felt obliged to treat astrology not

9:11

as a thing in itself, but

9:14

as a failed version of something else, a

9:16

failed version of religion, a failed

9:19

version of science, a pseudo science, et

9:21

cetera. Whereas I wanted to say it's

9:24

a thing in itself, like

9:27

ultimately everything is and should be treated

9:29

with that kind of seriousness. Right.

9:32

I was really surprised actually in rereading the

9:34

book how you really set a

9:36

program for that, like right at the very beginning

9:39

in the introduction or in the first chapter of

9:41

saying that that's how you're going to approach

9:44

things, which seems so

9:47

obvious now 40 years later, but

9:49

it wasn't obvious at the time

9:51

necessarily. Yeah. Oh, that's

9:53

right. That's right. Yeah. That's

9:56

Another word that comes to

9:58

mind. Patrick's

10:00

been talking about Modest Orange.which is

10:02

to work abby. Say

10:04

you have the an otherwise. Now.

10:08

Respected. Figure from the past because

10:10

they were. Both. To scientist

10:13

or scala unpaid about astrological

10:15

practice, the standard tablet apples

10:17

and astrology round like at that

10:19

will. They did it for

10:21

money. Or because

10:23

they had some sort of

10:26

royal contract. Or. Employment

10:28

is if required. Them to do

10:30

horoscopes on the site was of

10:32

course didn't really believe it. They

10:35

had to take the money and

10:37

if they did it without being

10:39

paid or requires Potter contract images

10:41

blink Ah. And

10:43

yet so we have from the

10:46

playwright that patrick's right a party.

10:48

examples of. Johan Kepler

10:50

and can lay on. Of

10:52

whom. My took

10:55

extraordinarily. Ah took

10:57

us astrology extraordinarily of seriously

10:59

and so I think that

11:02

is now sufficiently one understood

11:04

the school on. To.

11:06

Them to be. Treated. As is

11:08

it takes to assure you it

11:11

is innocent of their potential school

11:13

reformers. I'm about him. The people

11:15

that Patrick's writing about and seventeenth

11:17

century good would be well aware.

11:19

but.com. And that

11:21

whole views something. Patrick: How to. Hear.

11:26

That downplaying a tendency to

11:29

downplay not just sports cause

11:31

actual practitioners are or famous

11:33

scientists and astrologers like My

11:36

Kepler who was both. Attributed

11:39

that of both downplaying it but also

11:41

as having only done it for financial

11:43

reasons or something that like that which

11:45

ignores the person or charts and work

11:48

that he did with astrology throughout his

11:50

life. Smart. Or

11:53

eight. So let's focus on the

11:55

period dose of his books primarily

11:57

focus is on astrology and seventeenth

11:59

century. England, which is an

12:02

enormously interesting and fascinating

12:04

period to. Because

12:06

it seems like by this

12:09

time astrology starts being really

12:11

well documented because I'm thinking

12:13

I'm comparing it with like

12:15

my own specialty tradition of

12:17

Hellenistic astrology where we have

12:19

so little documentation and of

12:21

the survival of you know

12:23

a handful of major astrological

12:25

manuals but often like the

12:27

dating of certain astrologers as

12:29

his little sketchy. We don't have

12:31

private correspondence or other things like that,

12:34

but by the time you get to

12:36

the seventeenth century, some the lives of

12:38

so these different astrologers are so well

12:40

documented that it's amazing those huge amount

12:43

of material that you had to drawn.

12:47

Was. Very rich and our ice

12:49

I did a lot of that

12:51

research archival research in the Duke

12:53

Humphreys Library in Oxford, which of

12:55

course is a early seventeenth century.

12:58

Building. So you know, as

13:00

a North American, he was pretty

13:02

much like being in heaven. I

13:04

was in his seventeenth century building,

13:07

reading seventeenth century letters in the

13:09

Ashmolean Collection. Was a

13:11

great honor to be able to do

13:13

that. And yes there's a lot of

13:15

documentation of and of course all the

13:17

almanac which earned counselor did did did

13:19

such a good job of of looking

13:21

at. On. You

13:23

could, You could. Get quite close

13:25

to some. Of these people and I did. In

13:28

the course of the research, I felt quite. Close

13:30

to them. Like I knew, I knew them.

13:32

To said lead to some extent. It

13:35

would you can do and you have that kind

13:37

of more resources to draw upon. right?

13:40

So there's archives were.

13:43

So. You've got not just on

13:45

personal correspondence is of astrologers with

13:48

famous figures. It

13:50

but also the fact that they were

13:52

all publishing almanac send that even just

13:54

the practice of publishing arm and accept

13:57

become so commonplace gives you a lot

13:59

of documents. Like what they were

14:01

doing are saying and individual years. Yeah.

14:03

That's right, that's right, intercourse that you

14:05

know. But perhaps in a way. The

14:07

most striking thing about that period As

14:09

you have this. You. Have this

14:11

is. Flourishing of of

14:14

judicial astrology. Ah wear

14:16

a scarf Astrology They've

14:18

been particular in in

14:20

a in the fifties

14:22

sixties. And

14:24

Fifty And Sixty. Or

14:27

forties, fifties and sixties

14:30

followed by this collapse

14:32

which was extraordinarily rapid

14:34

for historical changes and

14:36

of. Are starting

14:39

point was something like well it can't be that. Everybody

14:41

thought astrology was true and then they

14:44

is it. Within the space is a

14:46

few years they decided that it wasn't

14:48

sure. They realize even worse that it

14:50

wasn't sure if. They all changed their

14:52

minds, know I thought that to be other

14:54

factors involved and that's. Where the social

14:57

and political changes of the period

14:59

starting to kick in. Ah, I'm

15:01

not not in a crude deterministic

15:04

way, but just that those changes

15:06

that had formerly major. And

15:09

welcoming environment to astrological

15:11

speculation and, and so

15:13

on, suddenly became much

15:15

less welcoming and tended

15:17

to shouted. Which.

15:20

I think is it is is is

15:22

perfectly plausible is nothing. Extraordinary about

15:25

saying. Riot.

15:27

So the seventeenth century was false

15:29

a peak and like a high

15:31

water mark for astrology it's but

15:34

also ended up being the period

15:36

in which it began a very

15:38

rapid decline in Europe for the

15:40

next couple of centuries. Yes, exactly.

15:42

That's exactly right. Yeah, It

15:45

was a heck of a time for astrology. So.

15:48

When you your central i think

15:51

maybe v central thesis in the

15:53

book seems like it is that

15:56

to the surprises me be like

15:58

earlier narratives from historian. That mainly

16:00

attributed the downfall of astrology to

16:03

the scientific revolution. In this, this

16:05

assumption that astrology was was scientifically

16:07

disproven expert experimentally at the time,

16:10

but instead part of what happened

16:12

at least in England was that

16:15

a got tied up in politics

16:17

and power dynamics that happened around

16:19

that time which than had an

16:22

effect on the the perception of

16:24

astrologers is that. Just.

16:27

As I'm or that is exactly

16:29

right in the the role society

16:31

and people like that isn't The

16:33

natural philosophers of the day later

16:35

called scientists were part of the

16:37

same sort of maelstrom of social

16:39

and political and cultural changes that

16:41

were going around. Nobody. Was

16:43

standing outside that in making things happen

16:46

are manipulating things. Including scientists.

16:50

Yeah. That makes me a give me

16:52

a real by. I felt like there was

16:54

lot of parallels with with astrology today and

16:57

different ways or is hard for me to

16:59

not look at that because part of it

17:01

was that each astrologer had their with. There

17:03

was a civil war in the seventeenth century

17:05

and. Different astrologers run different

17:07

sides and would sometimes color their

17:09

predictions based on who they favored.

17:11

And that's you know that. An

17:13

issue I think this trousers have

17:16

run into in different periods. In

17:19

Nyc, that's something that he has

17:21

continued to be the case in

17:23

different ways. Like, for example, you

17:25

documented in one of your books

17:27

you know, John Quigley for example,

17:29

working for the President Ronald Reagan.

17:34

D S. Ah, it,

17:37

it outlines you. Think

17:39

John Quickly is an

17:41

example of an astrologer

17:43

who. Are did

17:45

try to stick to the

17:48

astrology mean she was. Ah,

17:51

it was an extraordinary situation

17:53

and the she was. Ah,

17:55

advising. Know. Mentally the most

17:57

powerful man in the world. I'm

18:00

good if you if you read what she

18:02

wrote and or sided me to see her

18:04

lecture off. L

18:06

Story was recovered and she.

18:10

Was clearly. Taking.

18:12

The astrology and and saying to

18:14

rake and what he should do

18:16

some of which was or interest

18:18

in like I'm at a time

18:20

with the Iran Contra de scandal

18:22

one. Of our exit

18:25

expo say bombs, illegal arms

18:27

sales in Central America she

18:29

said don't say anything. With

18:32

reminded me of advice to the

18:34

Babylonian kings to stand the past.

18:37

but if you're a lawn, quickly.

18:39

Yeah. I looked. I loved your emphasis of

18:41

that as such a brilliant point that

18:43

I was stuck in my mind how

18:45

you made that parallel with John Quigley,

18:47

told him to be silent for like

18:49

sixty days, and that you picked out

18:51

a parallel in the Babylonian traditions of

18:53

ancient astrologer for like seven hundred B

18:55

C E, who had told the king

18:58

literally in a don't go outside, don't

19:00

do anything during this time that there's

19:02

such a parallelism in the ass logical

19:04

tradition going back thousands of years. Oh

19:07

yes, I don't know if they can quickly

19:09

was aware of that. Tradition.

19:11

But she certainly express to

19:13

dry well. I. Was going to

19:15

say that I think the. Big. Problem

19:17

As astrologers. Us

19:20

using their predictions to

19:22

promote a political. Point

19:26

of view is still very strong

19:28

in a few. ah, surf social

19:30

media and so and you'll see

19:32

astrologers saying. Ah,

19:34

this or that is going

19:36

to happen and clearly in

19:38

in invoking Astronautical. Factors

19:41

to support a point of view. Ah,

19:43

and if we go back to seventeenth

19:45

century. I think an additional factor

19:48

in the Civil War era. Was

19:51

that there were two warring

19:53

sides? And.

19:56

Ah, it must have been in. so

19:58

many people are incredibly this to find in

20:00

England 1642 to 1649 your country torn apart

20:02

and the king executed and then a

20:12

very strict puritanical regime.

20:16

So I've just been rereading

20:19

some of William Lilly's work, he

20:21

being of course one of the most prominent astrologers of

20:23

the time. And what

20:27

I feel like Patrick said, he knew the people who's

20:29

talking about, I really feel I've come know

20:31

him, he's now like an old friend. You

20:33

can feel that he's one

20:35

point to put things into print,

20:38

but not one point to

20:41

alienate the royal faction or the

20:43

parliamentary faction, either of whom might

20:45

win and then take some kind

20:47

of revenge. So I

20:51

really think that that was

20:54

a serious issue then in an unstable,

20:56

uncertain world, they're operating it at least

20:59

in that civil war and Republican period. That's

21:02

huge. And that's, I'm, I

21:04

think that's one of the most subtle, but

21:06

probably important and striking things I've

21:09

read and rereading that treatment in Patrick's

21:11

book, but just that each of these

21:13

astrologers, because they were in

21:15

a such a tense social and political

21:17

climate, had real pressures

21:19

on them in terms of their

21:21

predictions, not just mattering,

21:24

but also sometimes being threats to

21:26

their lives based on what they

21:29

would say or not say. And

21:31

therefore, sometimes there was both

21:33

internal self censorship, which

21:36

can still be the case today. But

21:39

also, there were major issues

21:41

with external censorship during

21:43

that period as well. Oh, yeah. I

21:46

think at the risk of being banal, the

21:48

bottom line to all this is that it's

21:51

a human activity. These

21:53

are human beings we are talking

21:55

about in placed in circumstances

21:57

as we are that we're not in control.

22:00

Oh, entirely in control of

22:02

and and can't manipulate the

22:04

outcome of so Astrologers are

22:06

human beings a dozen. Shows.

22:08

A human activities and doesn't mean the

22:10

that. You can say anything you want

22:13

to. It's not

22:15

a relative this point like that because

22:17

you're constrained by the am. I.

22:20

The tradition and by the room,

22:22

the astrological tradition and the astrological

22:24

rituals. And they and they have

22:26

certain definite parameters and then and

22:29

and tendencies and instructions on you

22:31

can't just ignore those and still

22:33

be considered to be a good

22:36

astrologer or perhaps an astrologer and

22:38

all. But it does mean that

22:40

there's that element of uncertainty which

22:43

is there is relevant him but

22:45

Babylon back in the day as

22:47

it is in two thousand and.

22:49

Twenty Four. Install you learned exempt

22:51

from it. Yeah

22:54

when it also made me think of

22:56

it's a section more of a recurring

22:58

dream that I realized self censorship because

23:00

I thought of immediately for make us

23:03

maternal in the fourth century and he

23:05

writes entire text book about astrology and

23:07

applying it to charge and looking at

23:09

eminent shards reddit the beginning he says

23:11

very clearly have are the one charge

23:13

you can't look at his the Emperor

23:16

neeson and ago so far as to

23:18

claim and actually astrology doesn't even apply

23:20

to the emperor and then he he

23:22

goes goes on and obviously. That's not

23:24

true, and astrologers have a very long

23:27

tradition of look at the charts of

23:29

eminent people's Allen's even the has Nero's

23:31

charts as one of his chart examples

23:34

but from a Kiss obviously. Is

23:37

is trinity right? Careful because he's

23:39

in a position to could be

23:42

very dangerous. Absolutely Absolutely so. I

23:44

think if you're reading, somebody like

23:47

lil will him Lily. You

23:50

can tell that his sympathies

23:52

are. Largely

23:54

parliamentarian. And

23:57

they are largely with around hands, although very much

23:59

not with the. But

24:02

at the same time, even Lily wasn't entirely

24:05

consistent. I think there's an episode in which

24:08

Charles I applies to him

24:11

for advice, and he actually goes so far as

24:13

to try and help Charles escape

24:15

prison that he was in at the

24:17

time. So he had some

24:19

personal sympathy with the king. There's no

24:21

reason why we should expect complete consistency

24:24

of him any more than we should have anybody

24:26

else. I

24:29

think that another thing that struck me about

24:31

William Lilly on rereading him is

24:33

that he was a, in

24:36

my view, a devout Christian as devout as

24:39

anybody else. I remember Patrick, I

24:41

don't know if you were aware

24:43

of this or remember it, but back

24:45

about 40 years ago, there was a

24:47

view on the title

24:50

of William Lilly's Christian Astrology, that

24:52

he called it Christian Astrology because

24:55

somehow he wanted to cover

24:59

his bag. But

25:02

I've rather changed my mind on

25:05

that. The text that I've

25:07

been really analysing recently

25:09

was a 1644 text on

25:12

the comets of 1618 and

25:14

the Jupiter Saturn conjunctions. And

25:17

there's constant appeals to God, scripture,

25:23

and so on, such as

25:25

you might find in many other tracts of

25:27

the time. And then I'm thinking,

25:29

well, of course, God's

25:32

power over the universe was

25:35

not questioned. He

25:38

is king of the universe. And so that

25:41

wouldn't be questioned any more than now, you know,

25:43

we'd question gravity.

25:47

And so I've come

25:49

to see him

25:51

much more in terms of that

25:53

context and therefore being

25:57

aware and not of a need to

25:59

appease maybe Christian. of

26:02

astrology, but almost to appease God himself,

26:05

to say to God directly, I'm saying

26:07

this about the Jupiter-second conjunction or the

26:09

comet or whatever. Subject

26:11

to correction. Yeah, subject to

26:13

the fact that you created the stars in

26:15

the first place. Yeah, yeah. They are your

26:18

creation. Divine correction. Yeah, yeah.

26:21

No, I think you're right, Nick. Yeah.

26:23

While we're on the subject of Lily, I'd like

26:26

to just mention that I was asked to do

26:29

more of the early

26:31

modern astrologers for the Oxford

26:34

Dictionary of National Biography quite

26:36

a few years ago now, and that included

26:39

a long entry for Lily. And

26:41

my concluding sentence, I looked it up

26:44

again, my concluding sentence

26:46

for the entry on Lily in the

26:48

DNB was, quote, Lily

26:50

was a genius at something,

26:52

judicial astrology, which modern

26:55

mainstream opinion has since decided

26:57

is impossible to do at

26:59

all, let alone do well

27:01

or badly. I

27:03

wanted to remind people trying to understand

27:05

Lily, that they have this obstacle in

27:07

their way unless they've really looked into

27:09

it. Whereby the

27:12

question, for example, was Lily

27:14

a good astrologer or a bad astrologer

27:16

or a genius at astrology, which I

27:18

happen to think he was, but the

27:21

question cannot even be asked in

27:23

modern mainstream opinion, because it's impossible to

27:26

do astrology. Therefore, you can't do it

27:28

badly or well. I'm talking

27:30

about elite mainstream modern opinion.

27:33

Now, that may be changing very,

27:35

very slowly, but there is this

27:37

difficulty with Lily. And

27:40

once you get past it, I think

27:42

it's easy to see, yes, he was

27:44

absolutely exceptional as an astrologer. His skill,

27:47

not just his rhetorical skill, but his

27:49

interpretive astrological skills

27:52

were amazing. Yeah,

27:55

as I was rereading her book, I

27:57

was struck by What a unique.

28:01

He get he was and and you can

28:03

understand better what a towering figure work he

28:05

was in in being this sort of i'm.

28:08

Not. An archetype of an astrologer during

28:11

that time, by being a leading

28:13

figure that other astrologers perhaps look

28:15

to Oh, absolutely in a reverently.

28:17

But he was just doing all

28:19

these things because he wasn't just

28:21

the author of the first major

28:23

in English language text book and

28:26

astrology and sixteen Forty Seven And

28:28

but he also was writing an

28:30

almanac regularly and issuing predictions that

28:32

thousands and thousands of people were

28:34

listening to and being influenced by

28:36

their he was doing either consultations

28:38

constantly, With people from all different

28:40

social classes on I mean he

28:42

really was at was a striking

28:44

figure if you just imagine like

28:46

being an astrologer in his shoes

28:49

in the middle of the Civil

28:51

War where you're being torn between

28:53

two different sides. And

28:56

I stink in his. Some

28:58

slight indirect confirmation What you

29:00

just said is provided by

29:02

the fact of the friendship.

29:04

A deep friendship between Lily

29:06

and allies Ashmore. And.

29:08

As small after all was firmly

29:10

royalist. definitely in the other camp

29:13

that these two men were the

29:15

closest friends and they share One

29:17

of the things a they share

29:19

deeply was of course their understanding

29:22

him love of astrology. That's

29:24

a nice human touch, I think in my opinion.

29:28

Yeah. And Ashmore would go

29:30

on to be one of the

29:32

founders of the Royal Society, right?

29:34

That's. right? There. Are

29:38

a small actually protected lilies didn't

29:41

he? When the I did the

29:43

mana game was restored. He.

29:45

Did very much so that thrive as

29:47

right. right? That's really

29:49

important to leaves found himself in danger,

29:51

even thrown in jail or put on

29:53

trial a couple of times, but in

29:56

some instances he was able to get

29:58

help from people in high places. To

30:00

protect and basically. Yes,

30:03

That's right through. Here.

30:06

I'm. One of things with the

30:08

Lily in that I thought was

30:10

interesting. I'm going back to the

30:12

censorship point is there were restrictions

30:15

on what could be published. Leading

30:18

up leading into that period for

30:20

the first almost half of the

30:22

seventeenth century. But part of what

30:24

happened with the flourishing of Astrology

30:26

is that some of those censorship

30:28

restrictions were suddenly loosened up or

30:31

toward disappeared for a brief period

30:33

of time, right? Meow.

30:35

John Booker who was pretty wild

30:37

astrologer lit sound himself as the

30:39

official censored for for a while

30:41

under chrome. well so if is

30:43

pretty much anything goes to have

30:46

for it. Or

30:48

a so there is astrologer in charge of

30:50

them to was the one who was who

30:53

could approve things and then also just the

30:55

Civil War itself in there was something about

30:57

that it that changed things at that time

30:59

as well. Rent. Yeah, I am

31:02

sure. I'm. The

31:04

Lilies: I forget how many platoons

31:06

or regiments is worthless compared to,

31:09

but it was several. Because

31:12

he was his. Words were taken so

31:14

seriously. Profit. These routines

31:16

are seriously and yet by the

31:19

time this was all over there,

31:21

so to speak with the Restoration

31:23

the same. That

31:25

the same phenomenon is is

31:27

huge influence and his an

31:30

extent to which he was

31:32

taken seriously counted very heavily

31:34

against. And

31:36

and I sure you're aware

31:38

of this that the term

31:40

enthusiasm which of course literally

31:42

means to be sold with

31:44

God became after the restoration

31:46

and serious criticism an insult

31:48

even are you can't count

31:51

on so and so he's

31:53

enthusiastic. Meaning. Is

31:55

given to wilde political and social

31:57

ideas and Lily was among them.

32:00

astrologers along with other astrologers was very

32:02

much associated with precisely what

32:04

had brought them to fame in the first place.

32:07

So if there's a

32:09

moral, you can't trust history. Well,

32:12

I thought that was actually interesting as a

32:15

parallel. Also, it's just sometimes there

32:17

can be almost

32:20

quasi-revolutionary social or political movements.

32:23

Sometimes astrologers can get involved

32:25

with those, but then sometimes

32:28

the power dynamic can shift to

32:31

the other side and astrologers can

32:33

find themselves suddenly in the

32:36

camp that's not in power at

32:38

that point, which can result

32:40

in reprisals. I guess that was one of

32:42

the lessons I took from that. Yeah.

32:46

I mean, this is not

32:51

a jolly lesson to take home, but

32:53

I'm afraid that one of the take-home

32:55

lessons from my book is when

32:58

things change on a big scale

33:02

socially and politically

33:04

and culturally, you can't

33:06

expect to turn that around, certainly

33:10

not as an individual, not even as a

33:12

group of people. So you had these

33:15

attempts to reform astrology

33:18

in order to save it in

33:21

response to the changes that had taken place.

33:23

It really was after 1670

33:28

or 80, it would have been hard

33:30

to find an astrology who didn't say

33:33

they were reforming it in some way,

33:35

either along Aristotelian lines to make it

33:37

more rational, quote unquote, or

33:39

in terms of natural

33:42

philosophy with John Gold

33:44

and astrometeorology and so

33:47

on. In a sense, these attempts were all doomed.

33:52

Fair play to them for trying, but

33:54

nothing could save the astrology that they

33:56

had. Nothing was ever going to. You'd

33:58

have to come up with a With a

34:00

new kind of astrology brand which

34:02

eventually happened of course with a

34:04

psychological strategy of the. Interview:

34:08

Ninety Nine Hundred or early Nineteen

34:10

Hundreds. That was a new kind

34:12

of astrology on the back of

34:14

another major change in which brought

34:17

psychology the for true. I was

34:19

entirely new development and Strauss's were

34:21

quick to move with it. Better.

34:25

To think that you can actually

34:27

sect major change through astrology? I'm.

34:30

I'm not too big on an idea. She.

34:34

She on mean. One. Of the

34:36

reform movements that was interesting also was

34:38

at back to Ptolemy movement us but

34:40

let's go back to this the oldest

34:43

tax that we have access to and

34:45

they noticed how different it was sometimes

34:47

compared to to other tax they didn't

34:50

heritage from the medieval tradition and system.

34:52

the astrologers traders strip astrology down to

34:54

just what Ptolemy done. Yes,

34:56

It was an attempt to return to

34:59

an original purity. Of

35:02

astrological interpretation which some well have

35:04

to be pretty careful with stuff

35:07

like that. Will. Really

35:09

we've seen that Rick are also and

35:11

and modern times the to it's I

35:13

who did you have You actually were

35:15

witness to that I was actually surprised

35:17

by and your book already. There are

35:19

some things that I thought came later

35:21

in terms of discussions about astrology is

35:24

divination are for a things like that

35:26

today's I thought originate in the nineties

35:28

but actually you're already aware of and

35:30

and citing some articles related. jumped up

35:32

by the youngest yeah there was a

35:34

there was him and an interest in

35:36

that in that direction sort of all

35:38

wildly. Different direction from moving

35:40

in and towards go colors

35:42

inspired. scientific probity of a

35:44

million in a way is

35:47

testament to astrologers richness that

35:49

it can move in so

35:51

many extremely different directions. you

35:54

know that's a great point that's an exact

35:56

parallel were in the late twentieth century at

35:58

bolsa the same movements yet it at to

36:00

go towards the scientific astrology, quote-unquote scientific

36:02

astrology, and you had an attempt to

36:04

go back to the ancient sources movement,

36:07

which is a perfect parallel with what

36:09

you were documenting in that later

36:12

half of the 17th century, where there

36:14

was a sort of make astrology scientific

36:16

and empirical movement, and there was a

36:19

take astrology back to the sources movement. Yes,

36:22

that's right. I think

36:24

it was, there's another sort

36:29

of reformism in the early

36:31

17th century as well, so we have to, you

36:33

know, take it back to essentials, like go back

36:35

to Ptolemy, but we

36:37

also have the empirical

36:41

ideas of Kepler, who

36:46

rejected the Zodiac, rejected

36:51

the 12 sign

36:53

houses, even though I

36:55

think when he was called upon

36:57

to perform astrotical work, he would

36:59

use the richness of astrotical

37:03

technique to a degree. But

37:05

in theory, he said that what we

37:07

have to do is look at

37:11

planetary cycles,

37:15

look to historical precedents to see what

37:17

occurs when two planets are in aspect,

37:20

and then build up a picture like that. And

37:24

I was struck by

37:27

this because Kepler was writing

37:31

in the 1610s and

37:34

1610s, and

37:38

his work was getting through to the

37:40

English astrologers. So, for example, Kepler revived,

37:46

I think he revived this from the balance, the

37:49

idea of day three year progression so that,

37:52

as you know, you know, the second day after

37:54

life was equipped with the second year and so

37:56

on. And Lily applied this to

37:59

mundane, productive, and so on. predictions. And

38:02

he did this in 1642. And

38:06

so I'm thinking that

38:08

Kepler's work was clearly

38:11

filtering into England. I don't know if Lily

38:13

read that particular text

38:16

of Kepler's directly. So

38:20

another way I've

38:22

began to see Lily is

38:25

not just as a

38:28

simple modernizer, but like so

38:30

many modern astrologers do, they're eclectic

38:32

or syncretic. They take one technique

38:34

from here and one from there

38:37

and bundle them all together. And

38:41

I think that this probably happens with astrologers in

38:43

their 20s. Bit

38:45

of Hellenistic astrology, a bit of evolutionary

38:49

astrology, a bit of this, a bit

38:51

of that. And so I think that

38:54

was going on as well. So one

38:56

can identify almost ideal trajectories like looking

38:58

back the past, reforming

39:01

in different ways. But then

39:03

you've got a lot of people who are

39:05

in a sort of middle position

39:09

and not so clearly defined. And

39:12

instead, using whatever's there. I

39:16

think that's most of us. In

39:20

every aspect of life, actually.

39:22

Yes, yes, improvising like crazy.

39:25

Of course, there was also some resistance

39:28

to Kepler's idea among astrologers

39:31

at the time. I remember one astrologer

39:33

referring to Kepler as that witty man.

39:36

Of course, that was an insult to call somebody

39:38

witty, meaning

39:42

yes, yes, very clever, but not sound.

39:46

And that hasn't changed either. It

39:49

still has that sort of thing going on. Some

39:51

of the bickering and

39:54

the fights between the different

39:56

astrologers were legendary. That's the other part

39:58

that's very entertaining about. 17th century

40:01

astrology and how well documented it

40:03

was, was there were some pretty

40:05

legendary sort of knockdown drag out

40:08

like fights between some of these

40:10

different astrologers, right? Yes, absolutely. Particularly,

40:12

for example, between George Wharton who

40:15

was leading royalist astrologer and and

40:18

Lily. But then

40:20

when the parliamentary victory

40:23

was complete for the time being,

40:25

Lily rescued Wharton

40:27

from being stopped, Wharton from

40:29

jail and being probably being

40:32

executed. So there was

40:34

this loyalty among astrologers that

40:38

when the chips were down that seemed

40:41

to transcend politics most of the time, which I

40:43

think is all the good thing. Yeah,

40:47

that seems crucial and

40:50

also one of the things you document in

40:52

one chapter that I thought was striking and

40:54

this has to be a first, but that

40:56

there was a period of what

40:58

like 20 years where there was an

41:01

astrology, there were astrology meetings

41:03

basically that occurred where a

41:05

group of maybe 40 astrologers

41:07

would meet up semi regularly.

41:10

Yeah, the astrologers' feasts, which

41:14

is probably one of my favorite

41:16

parts of the book because it's

41:19

just a

41:21

lovely period piece. I mean how nice it

41:23

must have been for them to have to

41:25

be able to have a

41:27

big feast once a year, a big

41:30

event in public without having to

41:32

do it secretly or privately and

41:35

invite pretty much

41:37

everybody, friends and enemies

41:39

alike, and then have a sermon after the feast to

41:41

listen to. I mean that was a great thing to

41:43

be able to do and of

41:45

course it came to an end when it

41:48

couldn't be sustained. And

41:50

with hindsight we can sort of see,

41:52

oh you're not going to

41:54

be able to carry on doing this forever, mate.

41:56

It's not going to pan out that way. They

41:59

didn't know that. they thought, well, we're

42:01

probably going to have these fees forever. No.

42:03

And the last few were quite poignant

42:06

because by then not only

42:08

was the temper of the

42:10

times against being

42:13

openly astrological, but a

42:15

lot of the astrologers of the earlier generations were dead,

42:17

of course. So, yeah,

42:19

that's a favorite episode of

42:22

mine. Yeah, there

42:24

was like a changing of the generations where

42:26

you lost

42:28

many of those astrologers. And

42:32

I thought that was poignant also just because I

42:34

can see some of that. There's

42:36

been this new generation of astrologers that I've seen

42:38

come up in the past several

42:40

years where suddenly there's this huge influx

42:42

of younger astrologers into the field. And

42:45

then at the same time, we've started to lose

42:47

some of the astrologers from the generation

42:49

that came in in the 1940s. And

42:53

it made me think sometimes just about different

42:55

generations of astrologers coming

42:57

and going into overlap occasionally between

43:00

them. But sometimes there's those shifts

43:02

from one generation to another. Yes,

43:05

absolutely. Yeah, we are seeing that. Patrick,

43:08

just in relation to this

43:12

generations changing, you

43:14

introduced Thomas Cohen's structure

43:16

scientific revolutions in

43:19

the book. So,

43:21

you're saying it's the case that fundamentally,

43:28

as astrologers, died off. So,

43:31

astrology died

43:33

off. Which would

43:35

be a kind of cuddian thing to say.

43:38

Well, different versions of astrology may

43:40

maybe die off. I think Cohen's

43:43

central point, which Max

43:46

Planck, the physicist, had stated

43:48

years and years before Cohen was

43:51

that ideas about the truth

43:53

don't... The basic

43:55

way they change is that a certain generation who

43:57

sees things a certain way dies off as replaced

43:59

by... a new generation who see things

44:01

differently. But of course,

44:04

in the case of astrology, that's

44:07

not entirely true because of the

44:09

extraordinary richness and, I

44:13

want to say, durability

44:18

of the astrological tradition, such

44:22

that if you really get to grips

44:24

with the astrological tradition deeply enough, in

44:26

any particular respect of it, you will

44:29

sooner or later encounter all the other respects,

44:32

which embody different paradigms and different

44:35

perspectives on the same subject, namely

44:37

the meaning of the stars. And

44:41

I think that's a real

44:44

treasure about

44:46

astrology. It's something to really

44:49

value. It's very unusual. And

44:53

one of the points you make in the book, you

44:55

say that it's not possible to say

44:57

anymore that astrology died because even though

44:59

there was this decline,

45:02

astrology lived on in the 18th and 19th

45:05

centuries and almanacs and different practitioners

45:07

that carried on parts of that

45:09

tradition until it was eventually revived

45:11

in the late 19th and early

45:14

20th century. Yes,

45:16

that's exactly right. I mean,

45:18

judicial astrology, horoscopic

45:20

judicial astrology, largely,

45:24

largely, the generalization, retreated

45:26

from London, from the big metropolitan centers

45:28

to the provincial towns, and

45:31

was carried on as part

45:33

of the practices of people like surveyors,

45:36

headmasters of schools, geologists,

45:43

amateur astronomers, and

45:45

people of educated

45:47

people, but not part of the

45:49

sort of metropolitan elite. And

45:52

it carried on

45:54

very nicely there until it made

45:56

a metropolitan comeback starting

45:58

with people like Raphael. and so

46:01

on, the sort of occult revival.

46:04

But it certainly never died. What

46:07

did die in a sense was that

46:10

what I call philosophical astrology was

46:12

absorbed by natural philosophy, for

46:16

example, by Newton. And what

46:18

couldn't be used, which tended to

46:20

be the occult in the

46:22

sense of magical stuff was excluded

46:24

and dropped. So

46:27

that was a pretty big change. But

46:29

below them all at the popular level,

46:33

level of old Murs almanac among the laboring

46:36

poor, it was as if

46:38

nothing, all that stuff was on the surface. Nothing

46:40

had changed at all, if

46:43

you go down far enough, so to speak, in

46:45

the social ladder. So its

46:47

fate was much more complicated than

46:50

it used to be. So many historians

46:53

used to talk about the death of

46:55

astrology. It's ridiculous over simplification. Interestingly,

46:58

we've got that same or

47:03

social intellectual stratification of astrology that's

47:05

continued through the 20th century in

47:07

terms of popular astrology, which

47:10

has tended to be focused before

47:13

things all went online as they're happening now

47:16

in the days of the heyday print

47:18

media, women's

47:20

magazines, teenage girls magazines,

47:24

and newspapers aimed at the popularness.

47:28

Whereas in the New York Times, the Washington

47:30

Post, the much daily telegraph

47:33

and so on, no horoscope columns.

47:36

And if astrology was mentioned, it would be

47:39

some sort of funny story. Yes,

47:41

that's exactly right. So that that

47:48

development that you've just observed happening

47:51

in the late 17th, 30th, 18th century has

47:54

actually sustained

47:56

itself, even though

47:59

astrology. No. Nineteen

48:02

Hundreds. And. Now

48:04

is became a lot more popular

48:06

again in a part of far

48:08

more mainstream in a in a

48:10

variety of foods. Though.

48:14

A lot of psychological strozzi,

48:16

particularly perhaps younger psychological stores

48:18

in. This

48:20

is that still around and

48:22

and this is something practiced

48:24

by or believed in. If

48:26

you prefer an educated people

48:28

who are certainly educated, love

48:30

the Ph D's and whatnot.

48:33

But again I would say on the whole

48:36

they're not. Among the. Opinion

48:39

formers and movers and shakers

48:41

read the newspapers. That

48:44

you just mentioned the don't have any

48:46

strong sour. There is there

48:48

is. Still, A lot of

48:50

social complexity and intellectual complexity That

48:53

to the picture. Just. For.

48:57

A one term leave mentioned a few times

48:59

as traditional astrology and it brings up a

49:01

distinction that was very common in the seventeenth

49:03

century, but as not as common today and

49:05

as willing if you could expand on that.

49:08

Well. I think that the key

49:10

march of judicial straws used to do

49:12

with individuals. So

49:14

and the the fate

49:17

shall we say of

49:19

individuals know that was

49:21

always for millennia. Contentious.

49:25

Because it. Seem. To

49:27

potentially infringe to the or. Infringe

49:30

Free will. A divinely granted.

49:33

Free. Will serve You are predicting.

49:36

Ah, An outcome for somebody

49:38

euro you could the overriding.

49:42

Their the their free will to

49:44

exercise. That. And to

49:46

turn in their own outcome. Or.

49:48

You could be infringed seen as infringing

49:51

gods ability to determine what is gonna

49:53

happen to that person. And of course

49:55

that was like a really dangerous thing

49:58

to it to do to claim. that

50:00

kind of power. Whereas with

50:02

the natural astrology is more to do

50:04

with collective collectivities, the weather, agricultural

50:08

crops, natural

50:10

cycles and so on. It's not

50:12

as such an individual phenomenon. So

50:18

I don't know if you want to get into this now but I

50:20

mean one interesting point that Darryl

50:23

Rutkin makes in his forward is

50:25

he criticizes me for my

50:28

definition of astrology as being too broad. Do

50:34

you want to get into this now? Yeah let's

50:36

do it. I did notice, I thought there was

50:39

your initial, you do put in the original version

50:41

of the book in 1989

50:43

you did sort of put forward

50:45

a definition of astrology and

50:47

I think that definition is a little

50:49

bit different than one maybe you fine-tuned

50:51

it later. Yeah, yeah later.

50:55

What are your definitions of

50:57

astrology? Well so

51:00

just to come back to Darryl for a minute, from

51:04

his point of view there is

51:06

no astrology without horoscope.

51:11

I mean I don't have a strong position

51:14

on that. I can see the point of saying

51:16

it. So there's no astrology

51:18

without charts, without a birth chart? Correct,

51:21

some kind of charts. It's more or

51:23

less says that in the forward. I

51:26

mean I'm not sure I agree with that.

51:28

It certainly wasn't my

51:30

original position. My original definition

51:33

in the book is quote of

51:35

astrology was quote, any practice or

51:38

belief that centers on interpreting the

51:40

human or terrestrial meaning of the

51:43

stars. And

51:45

then a few years later for an encyclopedia that

51:47

I cannot now find, I

51:49

said astrology is the practice of

51:52

relating the heavenly bodies to lives

51:54

and events on earth and the

51:57

tradition that has thus been generated. those

52:01

definitions are deliberately broad,

52:03

deliberately broad. And the

52:05

two things I wanted to avoid, the reason I

52:07

wanted to make them broad, is I wanted to

52:09

avoid two restrictions

52:12

that are very common in definitions

52:14

of astrology that I feel are

52:17

too restrictive. One is,

52:20

you'll notice that the way I've defined it, that

52:23

no causality is required.

52:26

I never, I haven't used the

52:29

word influence once. Personally,

52:32

I think talking about influences

52:35

of the stars is

52:37

asking for trouble, because

52:39

you're opening the door to the scientists

52:41

to say, well, oh, influences, okay, well,

52:45

of the four known forces of

52:47

the cosmos, gravity, electromagnetism, and

52:49

so on. Which one

52:51

is the astrological? Can you show me that?

52:54

No, of course we can't. So

52:56

I think causality is asking for trouble, although

52:58

I don't want to exclude it. There may

53:00

be a kind of natural

53:02

astrological effects along

53:05

the lines that Gokhala started to

53:07

discover, and that Graham Douglas is

53:09

still working on

53:11

defining, but I don't think it

53:13

should be required. Well, and there's

53:15

just going back to ancient times, there's

53:18

a long-standing debate about whether astrology worked

53:20

as a result of the stars acting

53:23

as signs of future events

53:25

or as causes. So

53:28

any definition that doesn't encompass that there's

53:30

a debate, long-standing debate in

53:32

the astrological community between the mechanism

53:35

for astrology is an inadequate

53:37

definition, but that's one of

53:39

the advantages of your definition

53:41

is virtually all contemporary,

53:44

I don't know, like

53:46

dictionaries or even scientific

53:48

articles overlook this issue

53:50

or this distinction, and they all

53:52

frame it as astrology is the

53:55

study of celestial causes. They

53:57

do, and that's a mistake because it is a

53:59

huge line. and long-standing debate, you're

54:01

exactly right. And I come

54:03

down on the signs rather than causes

54:05

side of the debate, but I don't

54:07

want to exclude causes from the definition,

54:09

but I also don't want to require

54:11

it. And

54:15

the other thing I wanted to leave

54:17

out was any requirement

54:20

for prediction. Again,

54:23

I don't want to exclude prediction, but

54:25

well, actually, I kind of would want to

54:27

exclude, but I'm very dubious

54:30

about predicting future events. But

54:33

in any case, I don't think

54:35

astrology depends on predicting future events.

54:38

It can be entirely about

54:40

asserting the truth of the

54:42

situation now and

54:45

here, and there's no problem with that.

54:48

So again, as with the causality,

54:50

I don't want to

54:52

exclude prediction, but I also don't want

54:54

to depend on it. That's why my

54:56

definition is what Darryl Rutt can call

54:58

broad or too broad. Well, it was

55:01

broad for a couple of reasons. And

55:04

I just come back there. Patrick,

55:11

your second definition from the

55:13

History Encyclopedia has

55:15

become my sort of working

55:17

starting point. And

55:20

you use the word relating.

55:25

And it seems to me that we can take

55:27

that word a bit further. Now,

55:30

if we look at the

55:33

use of the word causes and

55:35

influence in 19th, 20th

55:39

century astrology as

55:41

it's used, it's often

55:44

used in terms of Mars moves

55:46

here and influences that or

55:48

causes that, which seems to

55:51

me to be a very

55:53

impoverished view

55:55

of the astrological tradition in

55:59

which a planet

56:01

caused something, or inferencing something as

56:03

part of a total complex picture

56:06

of the universe,

56:09

oscillated by Aristotle, which everything

56:11

was constantly influencing everything else,

56:15

and existing in chains of multiple

56:17

causes. So I think

56:20

that you're absolutely

56:22

right to frame your definition

56:24

as you did. It's

56:27

soon to be broad, which I

56:29

think deals with

56:31

the fact that astrology, as

56:34

we understand it, exists in many cultures. But

56:37

we have this problem of dealing

56:39

with the impoverishment, I

56:41

think, in modern astrology, of

56:44

the views of the tradition, which

56:47

brings us back to the importance of understanding

56:50

the history of astrology. Yeah,

56:54

yeah, good. Yeah. Right. For

56:56

sure. So

56:59

astrology, the

57:01

later definition is, astrology is the practice

57:04

of relating the heavenly bodies to lives

57:06

and events on earth and

57:08

the tradition that has thus been generated?

57:10

That's completely correct, yes. Okay.

57:14

Yeah, I've tried to do a broad

57:17

definition as well, which is very similar

57:19

to yours, which I've always said that

57:21

astrology is the study

57:24

of the correlation between celestial

57:26

movements and earthly events, because

57:28

I feel like in just about every astrological

57:30

tradition, one of the core concepts

57:34

or premises is that there is a

57:36

correlation between celestial movements and earthly events,

57:39

and that's something

57:42

that astrologers say is a phenomenon

57:44

that exists in the world versus,

57:47

if somebody from, let's say, a

57:49

skeptical perspective, they would say that

57:52

that phenomenon doesn't exist. But

57:56

for astrology, it's a minimal,

57:58

surely minimal requirement. I don't see how

58:00

we can do without that. Right. The

58:04

source passage for that is

58:06

in Plato's Timaeus, isn't

58:08

it, where Plato says that

58:11

the creator created

58:13

the planets for the purposes of keeping the

58:15

numbers of time? The

58:20

modern way of stating that is

58:22

as correlations. Oh, no, you're

58:24

not saying I agree with Plato, are you, Nick?

58:28

Patrick. We're getting

58:30

there. Oh, this is terrible. Yes,

58:32

yes. Five, 40 years

58:35

have passed. The

58:37

time Moses spent in the desert, and you've been on

58:40

a journey. So

58:44

that brings up a distinction. It's one that

58:46

you emphasize, Nick, where you've emphasized in

58:48

some of your books, you try to frame

58:50

it as a longstanding

58:53

distinction between an almost platonic

58:55

strand of astrology versus the

58:58

Aristotelian strand, which is the

59:00

more causal version

59:02

of astrology or naturalistic version.

59:04

And I was interested, Patrick, in

59:07

your book that this is something that came up,

59:09

that there were different astrologers that came down somewhat

59:12

strongly in terms of that divide,

59:14

of it being either something

59:16

that was more sign-based versus others where it

59:19

was more causal. Or there were some astrologers

59:21

that were more deterministic, whereas there were others

59:23

that were more, at

59:26

least somewhat less deterministic, including the lily.

59:29

Well, it's interesting that one

59:31

line of difference or

59:33

distinction that can be drawn in relation

59:36

to what you've just said, it

59:39

doesn't end up being drawn in an obvious

59:41

place with the irrationalists on

59:43

one side and the rationalists on the other.

59:46

What you have is on one side, you have

59:48

the more Ptolemaic or

59:53

Aristotelian astrologers who

59:56

claim, are

59:58

keen to describe themselves as rational

1:00:01

in the pre-scientific sense of rational, in

1:00:03

the Aristotelian sense of rational, which don't

1:00:05

forget, held good for hundreds and hundreds

1:00:07

of years. It was a very old

1:00:09

understanding of what it means to be

1:00:11

rational and very

1:00:14

causal. On the other

1:00:16

side, you have the

1:00:19

new natural philosophers who

1:00:25

are increasingly dubious that

1:00:27

there is such a thing as

1:00:29

astrological causation, as opposed

1:00:31

to, say, gravity and so on.

1:00:34

And you have the magical astrologers.

1:00:37

Well, the magical astrologers are,

1:00:39

in a sense, just as causal as the

1:00:41

other lot. It's

1:00:46

something they share with the natural philosophers.

1:00:49

They are interested in a model which

1:00:51

will enable them to understand

1:00:55

the cosmos and

1:00:57

exploit it and manipulate it and

1:00:59

make certain things happen by

1:01:02

an exercise in will and

1:01:04

knowledge. And the archival

1:01:07

figure here is the magus figure

1:01:09

of Pico della Mirindola, the

1:01:11

male magus standing at the

1:01:13

center of all these forces

1:01:16

flying around and controlling them

1:01:18

and manipulating them and so

1:01:20

on. A masculine exercise of

1:01:22

power, basically. So you

1:01:24

have the natural philosophers and the magicians,

1:01:26

in a sense, competing for who's

1:01:30

got the right to say that we have the

1:01:32

knowledge that we need in order to control the

1:01:34

universe for the benefit of, supposedly

1:01:38

for the benefit of mankind. And

1:01:40

I do mean mankind, which was

1:01:42

very much Francis

1:01:44

Bacon's goal. And

1:01:47

in the beginning, you had this in

1:01:49

the Royal Society, you had magicians and what

1:01:52

we would now, anachronistically called

1:01:54

scientists, hanging out together. They were

1:01:56

very much a mixture until it

1:01:58

started to settle down. and fall

1:02:00

into two camps. So

1:02:03

there's interesting distinctions and lines to be

1:02:05

drawn. And then you have,

1:02:07

in a sense, you have, I

1:02:09

wouldn't want to put too much weight on this, but

1:02:12

you could say you have divinatory astrology, astrologers,

1:02:15

perhaps like Lily

1:02:17

and subsequent figures,

1:02:21

who say, well,

1:02:24

I was looking something like I

1:02:26

was interpreting this map, this horoscope,

1:02:28

and the

1:02:30

significance of a certain aspect

1:02:33

pattern jumped out of me and communicated

1:02:35

to me the point

1:02:37

that, I

1:02:39

don't know, this man has married for

1:02:43

money and

1:02:46

it's all gone wrong, or

1:02:48

something incredibly precise like that,

1:02:52

which really, in a sense,

1:02:54

can't be derived rationally from the chart,

1:02:56

because there's just too many interpretive possibilities.

1:02:58

How do you single on that one?

1:03:01

And then that one turns out, let's

1:03:03

say, to be correct. Well,

1:03:05

then there's this sort of divinatory moment. There's

1:03:08

this sort of moment of wonder, like,

1:03:10

wow. And the next question

1:03:13

that follows up for an astrologer from

1:03:15

the client is always, how did

1:03:17

you know that? And of course,

1:03:19

the only honest answer

1:03:21

the astrologer can give is, well, I

1:03:24

didn't really know that. I

1:03:26

did the best astrology I could, and

1:03:29

that's what came out. But it

1:03:31

wasn't actually me doing it in

1:03:33

the end. So you have this

1:03:35

wild card among all the power people

1:03:38

and the rational people. Right.

1:03:41

And that goes back

1:03:44

to the judicial versus

1:03:46

natural astrology distinction. But

1:03:48

that was set up originally during

1:03:51

the rise of Christianity. Christianity

1:03:54

became very antithetical against astrology,

1:03:57

especially due to theological reasons, due to fate

1:03:59

and freedom. will. And so

1:04:02

during the medieval period, they developed this

1:04:04

distinction of saying, well, there's certain

1:04:07

types of astrology that are based on

1:04:09

natural influences of the planets, which is

1:04:12

acceptable. And there's other types

1:04:14

of astrology that is

1:04:16

not based on celestial influences

1:04:18

that is judicial and therefore

1:04:21

not within the realm of what's

1:04:23

okay to do and is more

1:04:25

closely aligned with magic or divination,

1:04:27

which the church doesn't condone. Codified

1:04:31

by Aquinas, of course. And if

1:04:34

you are identified as

1:04:36

practicing the second kind of

1:04:38

astrology, you're vulnerable to the

1:04:40

charge of associating with demons

1:04:44

who are supplying you with

1:04:46

this knowledge that you couldn't

1:04:49

otherwise obtain. I think one

1:04:51

serious charge. So I think

1:04:54

one point to overlap

1:04:56

here, which calls for the need always to

1:04:58

be fluid in our definitions, is

1:05:01

that Aquinas

1:05:04

in that medieval Christian position

1:05:06

allowed people to cast horoscopes

1:05:09

so hence if I be judicial make

1:05:13

judgments. It's just that those judgments

1:05:15

could not extend to

1:05:17

any matter concerning the soul's relationship

1:05:20

with God or chances of salvation.

1:05:23

So they had to start off by saying, well,

1:05:26

you've got a Mercury Mars conjunction, so you're

1:05:29

going to be a bit of a hothead.

1:05:32

You might lose your temper and get into a

1:05:34

fight. But for

1:05:37

the devout Christian person,

1:05:39

they'd pray, they'd read the

1:05:41

scriptures, and they would not lose their temper. So

1:05:47

you could do a psychological astrology at one

1:05:50

point. So you had to start off from

1:05:53

the idea of the physical. there

1:06:01

could be no celestial influence which directly

1:06:03

affected the mind or the soul, which

1:06:06

had to have that free, untrammeled

1:06:10

dialogue with God or via priest,

1:06:12

but with modern

1:06:14

scripture somehow. No,

1:06:16

speaking of somebody with a Mercury Mars conjunction,

1:06:19

I think that's rubbish, Nick. No,

1:06:21

I'm just kidding. I

1:06:25

do have a Mercury Mars conjunction. So,

1:06:27

for example, we probably need

1:06:29

to do a survey if

1:06:31

you're close friends and colleagues

1:06:33

that work

1:06:36

that out. Yeah, well,

1:06:38

and I always thought, from

1:06:40

my perspective, from the Hellenistic tradition perspective,

1:06:42

that the attempt to

1:06:44

create this distinction between judicial

1:06:46

and natural astrology was largely

1:06:49

arbitrary, and it was an

1:06:53

act of desperation where the tide

1:06:55

had turned against

1:06:58

astrology, and they were looking for any

1:07:00

way to still give it

1:07:02

justification and make it acceptable to

1:07:04

practice it in a Christian context.

1:07:07

So, I was always seeing that as something

1:07:09

that was somewhat arbitrary as an act of

1:07:11

desperation, but it's interesting how much that distinction

1:07:14

still mattered in the 17th century and that

1:07:16

people could get in trouble if you fell

1:07:18

on the wrong side of that distinction. Yeah,

1:07:21

that line was policed, but

1:07:23

Nick is absolutely right. It was, in

1:07:26

practice, a very complex line, and it

1:07:28

was never, you couldn't be

1:07:30

sure, always be sure, which side of the

1:07:32

line you were standing on, but

1:07:35

you had to be careful because it was

1:07:38

policed. So, I

1:07:40

agree that I made that distinction too simple

1:07:42

in my book, and it's one of the

1:07:44

things that Darryl Rutkin

1:07:47

politely takes me to task for, and

1:07:49

he's right. That it's

1:07:52

too simple of a distinction between judicial

1:07:54

and natural? Yeah, yeah, yeah, needs to

1:07:56

be complicated. Especially in practice.

1:07:59

Yeah. Well, just because

1:08:02

such a distinction didn't exist when

1:08:04

it was originally developed, and so it's

1:08:06

naturally something intellectually that's being

1:08:09

foisted on it in retrospect in

1:08:11

the medieval period. And

1:08:14

that becomes the issue is just all

1:08:16

of these different branches of astrology are using

1:08:19

the same technical construct. So

1:08:21

in the 17th century, you're

1:08:24

applying the same technical construct to study

1:08:26

different things, whether it's

1:08:28

mundane or horary or electional

1:08:30

or natal. There's

1:08:33

just this thin veneer

1:08:35

of saying that if there's celestial

1:08:38

influences, maybe that influences the body

1:08:41

versus a horary chart that's much

1:08:43

harder to justify on physical

1:08:46

grounds. Yes, that's exactly right.

1:08:49

Because the line

1:08:51

between judicial

1:08:54

and therefore impinging illegitimately,

1:08:57

theologically suspect astrology

1:09:00

and natural was

1:09:03

very fuzzy when it came to the body

1:09:05

because the body obviously influences the soul. But

1:09:08

they didn't want to say it determines the

1:09:10

soul. But if

1:09:12

it influences then, as Nick suggested, then you

1:09:15

could get away with saying, well, up to

1:09:17

a point, you can say

1:09:19

certain things like, yeah, if you have

1:09:21

a Mercury Mars conjunction, you probably are

1:09:23

a bit of a hothead. And like,

1:09:25

OK, is that OK to say? Yes,

1:09:29

I think so because of influence. But

1:09:31

you see what you see how complex it gets,

1:09:33

how complicated it gets in practice. One

1:09:36

example that we remember being talked about

1:09:39

again when we were discussing this four

1:09:41

decades ago is electing

1:09:44

a horoscope for the launch of a ship.

1:09:48

Some people did. So you can elect the best horoscope

1:09:50

you like for the launch of a ship. But

1:09:53

if you launch it when there's a low

1:09:55

tide, because it's in the wrong place.

1:10:00

the ship is going to not

1:10:02

go very far. So in

1:10:04

other words, the I've never resolved

1:10:07

that's a paradox. Yeah, absolutely. It's

1:10:09

good. It's good. I like that. All

1:10:13

right. And sometimes religious

1:10:16

authorities, one of the things you talk about

1:10:18

in the book that there was a specific

1:10:20

authority in charge of censorship and they could

1:10:22

shut down the ability of

1:10:24

astrologers to print almanacs. But that

1:10:26

was actually something there was a

1:10:29

specific year where that's

1:10:31

that got worse where the censorship

1:10:33

after disappearing for a decade or

1:10:35

two, the censorship came back very

1:10:38

strong after the Civil War. Yes.

1:10:41

I mean, it came roaring back with

1:10:43

Sir Roger Lestrange, who was the chief,

1:10:46

the new censor. And he

1:10:48

was really hard line and

1:10:51

printers and writers of almanacs that

1:10:54

were suspected of

1:10:56

sedition and at all would

1:11:00

end up in jail if they were lucky. Of

1:11:03

course, they were hyper, the authorities were hypersensitive, this

1:11:05

sort of thing, which they just had been through

1:11:07

a period of time in which

1:11:09

the House of Lords was abolished. The

1:11:12

bishops were all abolished and the king's head was

1:11:14

chopped off. I mean, they were they were scared.

1:11:16

So it was a restoration, but it wasn't like

1:11:19

everything went just back to being normal again. And

1:11:22

the astrologers had tended to be on the side of the

1:11:25

side that ended up cutting off the

1:11:27

head of the king, basically, right? On

1:11:30

the whole, they were definitely on the

1:11:32

revolutionary side. Yeah. Okay.

1:11:34

So then all of a sudden, the power shifts back

1:11:36

to the anti revolution areas and

1:11:38

the astrologers find themselves in a really delicate

1:11:41

political position. They do.

1:11:43

And one of the long term effects of

1:11:45

this period, as you know, too, Nick,

1:11:48

is that with the idea

1:11:51

that astrology was

1:11:54

enthusiastic or that was

1:11:56

often coupled with the

1:11:58

term crack brained. I.e.,

1:12:02

it lent itself to extreme political

1:12:06

programs and ideas and religious

1:12:08

radicalism. Gradually

1:12:11

over time, astrologers and

1:12:13

those who are just

1:12:15

interested in astrology came to

1:12:18

realize that was a dangerous and

1:12:21

unpopular position to take. So in a

1:12:23

way, we could say that the politics,

1:12:26

astrology had been deeply political.

1:12:29

The politics were beaten out of it over

1:12:31

time to the point where in

1:12:33

the modern world, if you said something like,

1:12:36

and this has been the case for quite a while,

1:12:38

I think, oh yes, astrology is very political.

1:12:41

You'd be met within comprehension. How

1:12:44

is it political? Why is it political? That's

1:12:47

not taken for granted anymore.

1:12:50

I mean, it isn't, but it actually, it has

1:12:52

come back very strongly in the past, especially

1:12:55

the recent generation of astrologers is

1:12:57

very politically oriented. And even

1:12:59

I think, Nick, you've noted

1:13:01

in the past, like a

1:13:04

tendency towards through the New

1:13:06

Age movement and things like that astrology being

1:13:09

associated with the

1:13:11

left broadly speaking more so

1:13:13

perhaps than the right,

1:13:17

if we can draw such distinctions. I'm

1:13:20

yeah, I think that

1:13:22

it can be both. So

1:13:28

clearly, there's a

1:13:30

from the 1960s, a

1:13:34

strong sort of counter cultural element

1:13:37

in astrology arising from people who got into

1:13:39

it. But

1:13:44

prior to then, I think

1:13:47

it could be quite

1:13:49

conservative. So for example, if you look at

1:13:52

Joan Wibley, she

1:13:55

was a member of the, I think, the, the the

1:14:00

American Federation of Astrologers. I

1:14:03

remember a

1:14:05

friend of mine taught me about

1:14:07

how she went along to

1:14:09

an AFA meeting in

1:14:12

the late sixties and she

1:14:15

was all dressed in a hippy gear.

1:14:17

She got to the conference to find

1:14:19

everybody dressed in businesses and sort of

1:14:22

Republicans. So,

1:14:25

and then I think if we go back

1:14:27

to the late eighties,

1:14:32

which we've mentioned, and

1:14:35

we have the theosophists, then,

1:14:39

and theosophical astrologers, of course they

1:14:41

were very involved, some of them,

1:14:44

some of the leading theosophists in

1:14:46

the anti-colonial movement in India.

1:14:50

And so, and tackling social

1:14:52

problems. So

1:14:57

for example, Anna Leo,

1:14:59

you know, seminal figure in the

1:15:01

development of a theosophical, karmically

1:15:04

oriented astrologer said, the

1:15:09

only reason he could find for

1:15:11

why some people were born into

1:15:13

poverty and some weren't was karma.

1:15:16

It's deeply troubled by the social

1:15:18

injustice. And so his

1:15:20

solution was karma. So I

1:15:22

think there's, there

1:15:25

is a study to be

1:15:27

made of how astrologers

1:15:29

maybe arrive at different political

1:15:32

positions. Yeah,

1:15:35

and how the, how

1:15:37

the political positions sometimes

1:15:39

inform the astrology and

1:15:42

sometimes vice versa. But

1:15:44

that's part of maybe the title of

1:15:46

your book is prophecy and power. And

1:15:49

power is actually like a central point

1:15:52

in the book or recurring theme. Why

1:15:54

is that? Well,

1:15:58

it's kind of delicate. What

1:16:02

I'm trying to say is that the

1:16:04

most philosophical or

1:16:06

religious or cultural

1:16:09

activities we do are entangled

1:16:13

in power relations because we're

1:16:16

social animals and we live

1:16:18

in structured societies. So,

1:16:20

unavoidably, they're entangled in

1:16:23

power relations in which the power is

1:16:25

unequally distributed. Some people have more power

1:16:28

than others, obviously. But

1:16:30

I don't want to say, I

1:16:32

don't think it follows from that,

1:16:36

that the religious, the

1:16:38

theology or the political statements

1:16:40

or the cultural

1:16:42

productions like books and art and

1:16:44

so on are only

1:16:46

the result of power relations,

1:16:49

which is what Michel Foucault

1:16:51

would have argued. I

1:16:53

think that's wrong. Entangled

1:16:56

is one thing, but I

1:16:59

want to resist any reductionism to

1:17:01

the power. So, affected,

1:17:04

so astrological discourse,

1:17:06

let's say, certainly affected by

1:17:08

power relations and circumstances and what's going on

1:17:10

at the time and what your values are,

1:17:12

your political values and so on. But

1:17:15

they cannot be reduced to those things. For

1:17:19

one thing you do, as I said earlier, I have

1:17:21

to respect the tradition if you're going to have the

1:17:23

respect of your peers. You can't

1:17:25

just say, suddenly decide that Mars

1:17:28

represents what Venus stands for

1:17:30

and Venus represents what Mars stands for. You

1:17:32

just can't get away with that kind of thing. There's

1:17:35

a resistance to the tradition. And

1:17:39

there's a skill, and if you are going to

1:17:41

make changes, there's a skill involved,

1:17:43

which other astrologers on the whole

1:17:45

will recognize. So it's not

1:17:48

that they're independent of power relations, but they're

1:17:50

just not completely dependent on them, not

1:17:52

determined by them. It's

1:17:55

a delicate balancing operation. That

1:17:59

makes sense. you open the book

1:18:01

thing that astrology was inseparable from

1:18:03

considerations of power just because of

1:18:06

the interrelation, especially politically with some of the

1:18:09

things that were going on. So

1:18:16

one of the other things that was happening, I've

1:18:19

been trying to do some research into comets

1:18:22

recently because there's actually a comet

1:18:24

right now that's passing by the

1:18:26

Jupiter Uranus conjunction that just took

1:18:28

place, like a comet just crossed

1:18:30

the ecliptic and passed over it.

1:18:32

It didn't end up being super

1:18:34

visible, but in

1:18:36

contemporary and modern astrology, there hasn't been

1:18:38

much treatment of comets in the 20th

1:18:41

or early 21st century, but

1:18:43

comets and things like

1:18:46

that were actually treated much more

1:18:48

widely in 17th century astrology. Right?

1:18:50

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

1:18:53

I don't know if you have a copy

1:18:55

of Astrology, Science and

1:18:57

Society, but

1:19:00

there's a really nice paper in

1:19:02

it by Simon

1:19:04

Schaffer entitled Newton's

1:19:07

Comets and the Transformation of

1:19:09

Astrology. You should maybe

1:19:11

check that out because

1:19:14

all kinds of phenomena

1:19:17

and effects were attributed to comets

1:19:19

that we would say, well, that

1:19:21

sounds pretty astrological to me by

1:19:25

people like Newton and William Winston and so

1:19:27

on. And I think that's,

1:19:32

you know, arguably that hasn't stopped. It

1:19:34

may have taken new forms and the Astronomer

1:19:37

Royal probably doesn't do it anymore, but

1:19:41

it hasn't stopped altogether. I think

1:19:44

there were two ways of looking at comets,

1:19:46

two totally compatible ways of looking at comets in

1:19:49

the early 17th

1:19:51

century. One is that they were widely

1:19:56

regarded as being spontaneous

1:19:59

fires. as bursting out

1:20:01

in the atmosphere. So

1:20:06

Menelius, who was obviously everybody read

1:20:08

at the time, talks

1:20:10

about a fire being everywhere in the universe. And you

1:20:12

know this because you've got fire

1:20:15

coming out the ground in volcanoes, you've got

1:20:17

hot, mumbling water in hot springs, let

1:20:20

alone shooting stars and the heat

1:20:22

from the sun and so on. So you

1:20:24

get volatile gases in

1:20:26

the atmosphere they ignite. And

1:20:30

sometimes they're ignited because they go too

1:20:32

close to the sun. And

1:20:35

at the same time, comets are unpredictable.

1:20:37

So they're absolutely

1:20:40

predictable in that full flow of the planet.

1:20:42

And therefore they must be signs from God.

1:20:46

Because anything unpredictable has to be there

1:20:48

for a reason. It

1:20:51

has to be God speaking. And

1:20:53

there's a term applied to

1:20:55

the response to

1:20:59

comets in the early 70s and

1:21:01

to confessionalization, which

1:21:04

is when the people had

1:21:06

to confess their faith, not

1:21:08

confess their sins because they're doing it anyway,

1:21:11

not confess their faith. And

1:21:13

one say to God, it's okay, I

1:21:16

believe in you. I'm a good

1:21:18

person, you know, and therefore to

1:21:20

avert the noxious eruptions

1:21:25

that might come from these fires blowing in

1:21:27

the atmosphere like stirring up plague and inciting

1:21:29

people to war and so on. And

1:21:33

that's what Lilly was talking about in the 1644 tract, which

1:21:40

was written in the early years of

1:21:42

the Civil War, but it's not

1:21:44

quite clear whether the

1:21:46

war is going to continue. In

1:21:50

its early days, is it going to be settled?

1:21:52

No one knows. It's gonna end

1:21:54

in the death of the king at that point.

1:21:57

So it's all very uncertain.

1:22:00

Come back to his. Com. Designated

1:22:02

and. What can you

1:22:04

tell us about what's happening now. So

1:22:08

he looked back to our past com it

1:22:10

noted understand one that was in the present.

1:22:13

No hints at what he looked back

1:22:15

to past com it's and and also

1:22:17

because. I'm. But.

1:22:20

Since the people interest in astronomy

1:22:22

to lilies time, acidic argument or

1:22:24

what com it's what below the

1:22:26

moon and swirl say. I'm

1:22:29

burning families of the atmosphere or

1:22:31

about why they some kind of.

1:22:34

Arms good perspective Aristotle to their a

1:22:36

subtle was the one that introduced to

1:22:38

the atmospheric thing which then. Caused

1:22:41

an issue and made astrologers not recognize

1:22:43

for a long time for some astrologers

1:22:45

that they were periodic phenomenon. That's

1:22:48

right, says he put his college is a

1:22:50

look at that he didn't mind. If.

1:22:52

They were below the moon will be on the Buddha. Burning

1:22:56

up several stuff they would just that

1:22:58

and so he saw as the chain

1:23:00

to significant is going back to previous.

1:23:04

Ah, Jupiter Saturn conjunctions.

1:23:07

Super know for certain. used to fifteen

1:23:09

simply to. I'm. All

1:23:12

of which could be. Bundled.

1:23:14

Ha to signify caters together and

1:23:17

you could then talk about. Prophecy.

1:23:21

And power You can make prophecies

1:23:23

in order to talk about the

1:23:25

way that our the shifting. And

1:23:29

don't forget in terms of

1:23:31

processing power his trousers had

1:23:33

in the seventeenth century astrologers

1:23:35

had. A certain degree of

1:23:37

real. Our. It was

1:23:39

rhetorical power. Visited

1:23:41

they they could influence the outcome

1:23:44

of events. And we

1:23:46

have a know that for quite a long time.

1:23:49

Except for maybe they god zone quickly here

1:23:51

and there. Are there and

1:23:53

put it there. I'm there. was

1:23:56

definitely a form of power that

1:23:58

astrologers themselves. were

1:24:00

able to exercise. Right,

1:24:02

because these almanacs had just huge readerships

1:24:04

with them. Like what was the largest?

1:24:07

It was thousands and thousands of copies.

1:24:09

So there were huge amounts of people

1:24:11

that were reading the words, not just

1:24:13

the words, but the predictions, because a

1:24:17

typical almanac at the end of it

1:24:19

would have a section where there would

1:24:21

be actually predictions or prophecies about the

1:24:23

future. That's right, that's right.

1:24:25

Yeah. So

1:24:29

that's the power that astrologers

1:24:31

had, is they had the power to influence

1:24:34

the masses and influence all

1:24:37

different levels of society. But

1:24:41

with that power came some

1:24:43

issues. Yes, well, with

1:24:45

that power, the exercise

1:24:47

of that power had unforeseen

1:24:50

consequences. You know, a great

1:24:52

deal of history is about

1:24:54

unforeseen consequences. And

1:24:56

so the identification is the

1:24:59

abuse of their, they were

1:25:01

seen retrospectively as having abused

1:25:04

their power to encourage radicalism

1:25:07

and upsetting things and a

1:25:09

world turned upside down as it was said

1:25:11

at the time. And

1:25:13

Nicholas Culpepper, who was in an Out

1:25:15

and Out radical, oh my

1:25:17

gosh, I think was

1:25:19

in his tract back Monday. He

1:25:22

said he didn't mind whether his predictions

1:25:24

were true or not, so long as

1:25:26

they gave comfort to the enemies of

1:25:28

monarchy. Mm. This is

1:25:30

very busy. Wow. Yeah.

1:25:33

Yeah. Yeah. So that's,

1:25:35

I mean, that's really interesting. And there's, you

1:25:37

know, parallels if a person, if

1:25:40

your political views are

1:25:43

the overriding thing, even

1:25:45

if the astrology is saying something

1:25:47

else that you want your political

1:25:49

message to be known, yeah,

1:25:52

more so that you're prioritizing that

1:25:55

over whatever the astrology says. The

1:26:00

cold pepper. It's

1:26:02

a dangerous position to take, I think, though,

1:26:05

in the long run. You

1:26:09

lose the right to say, the astrology says

1:26:11

x, y, z. If

1:26:17

you say it doesn't matter whether the

1:26:19

astrology is true or not, then you're

1:26:21

cutting yourself off from that rhetorical resource,

1:26:24

which I think would not be a good idea. I

1:26:27

don't think many people would take the cold pepper view there. That

1:26:29

was an extreme statement. It was. Because

1:26:32

his overwhelming priority was the creation

1:26:34

of a republic. Yes,

1:26:36

that's right. But I think for

1:26:39

most astrologists, it

1:26:41

was and is their standard

1:26:43

practice almost to,

1:26:46

not to consciously

1:26:51

say, oh, the astrology is not important because

1:26:53

I've got to shape it to

1:26:56

this political point of view, but to assume

1:26:59

that their political point of view is the

1:27:01

correct one. Right. And then

1:27:03

to say, well, look, the astrology

1:27:05

genuinely does support this position. Yeah,

1:27:10

that's right. Well, and

1:27:12

also part of the astrologer's currency

1:27:14

is the reputation is based on

1:27:17

the accuracy of their predictions. So

1:27:19

there's naturally then going to be a tension

1:27:21

between the astrologer wanting to be right

1:27:24

on the one hand, but

1:27:26

then also the astrologer personally wanting

1:27:28

their preferred outcome politically to take

1:27:30

place as well. And sometimes those

1:27:32

not being in alignment. Yeah,

1:27:35

that's a real tension, I think. Yeah.

1:27:41

Although I wouldn't overestimate the extent

1:27:43

to which the

1:27:47

opinion that astrology is correct or

1:27:49

valid or true depends on true

1:27:51

predictions. I mean, I think that

1:27:53

varies a great deal. And

1:27:56

of course, complexity

1:28:00

of astrology, I always

1:28:02

think that the sort

1:28:05

of, in a way perhaps, the Achilles'

1:28:08

heel of astrology is that it is

1:28:10

complexity. It can

1:28:12

become so complex that

1:28:14

it fails to simplify

1:28:17

your life because

1:28:19

it becomes as complex as life

1:28:21

itself. So it's like

1:28:23

the ultimate map that Borges,

1:28:26

in a short story, said this

1:28:28

cartographer created the ultimate map that

1:28:30

was so detailed and

1:28:33

so precise that ultimately it fitted

1:28:35

over the reality and emerged with the

1:28:38

reality, in which case, of course, it's no

1:28:40

use anymore. So astrology has

1:28:42

got to simplify to be

1:28:44

any use as a guide or as a help.

1:28:47

And that act of simplification when there's so

1:28:50

many variables in play, well,

1:28:53

that's not going to be easy. Yep.

1:28:55

So I think if we go back to the 17th

1:28:59

century and we look at Lillie,

1:29:02

and it's a good example because we've

1:29:04

got so many examples of his work.

1:29:08

In his horror rework,

1:29:11

he's advising individuals and he does come up

1:29:13

with precise judgments like

1:29:18

to exact questions like, will I

1:29:20

die? Will

1:29:23

I marry? Et cetera, et cetera. But

1:29:26

when you're dealing with political

1:29:28

forecasts, again, he tends to

1:29:30

come back to this standard

1:29:33

form of there will be trouble for princes and

1:29:36

plagues and great

1:29:38

turbulence because you've

1:29:41

got this massive complexity

1:29:44

to look ahead for

1:29:46

little truth. That's right. It's got

1:29:49

how many variables do you have to

1:29:51

consider? Well, exactly. And

1:29:53

that again, within the astrological

1:29:56

theory, we've

1:29:59

got. the horoscope for

1:30:02

the king, the horoscope for

1:30:06

the opposing king, you

1:30:08

know, as a delightful ruler for

1:30:10

the country and so on. And so

1:30:13

it becomes very difficult to say any more

1:30:15

than that there's

1:30:17

trouble ahead. So if your prediction

1:30:19

doesn't work out, of course, it's always open to

1:30:21

you to say, ah, I forgot

1:30:24

about this, the effect

1:30:26

of a Mars retrograde in the tents,

1:30:28

you know, or whatever. Because there's limits

1:30:30

to the extent to

1:30:32

which you can do that before people start

1:30:34

to get suspicious that you're simply covering your

1:30:36

back. Well, and again, this is where,

1:30:38

you know, we have, I think we have to

1:30:40

avoid the trap of saying, oh, well, the astrologers

1:30:43

were playing this game, which was

1:30:46

the standard historiographical view. They

1:30:48

were being totally genuine. It's

1:30:50

just the task they had set themselves

1:30:53

was probably

1:30:55

impossible. Except in

1:30:58

very occasional circumstances.

1:31:02

Yeah, I mean, as somebody who

1:31:04

over the podcast, we do a monthly

1:31:06

forecast episode where we look at world

1:31:08

events and look at it through the

1:31:10

lens of astrology over the past 10

1:31:12

years and has had to learn that

1:31:15

form of astrology, which is very different

1:31:17

than natal astrology. Reading some

1:31:19

of your treatment of Lily, it gave me a

1:31:21

great sympathy for what he

1:31:23

was going through because of seeing

1:31:27

an astrologer who was living in historic

1:31:29

times and was doing his best to

1:31:32

accurately forecast and predict the

1:31:34

future when you're dealing with

1:31:36

highly complex events that

1:31:38

are affecting different levels of society, that

1:31:41

there's many different factors, both

1:31:43

personally and politically, that are pressures

1:31:45

on you. It

1:31:47

was interesting understanding that

1:31:49

from a different perspective, having

1:31:52

that perspective of doing that in modern times

1:31:54

where we have, you know, plague

1:31:56

suddenly breaking out in 2020. We have you

1:32:01

know, major political shifts taking place at

1:32:03

different points with different people being elected

1:32:05

or other things like that. There's still

1:32:08

a surprising amount of parallels of

1:32:10

things that sound like ancient concepts,

1:32:12

you know, of an eclipse happening

1:32:14

and a monarch like passing away

1:32:17

or something like that, or of a president passing

1:32:19

away or something. You

1:32:21

know, a lot of those things are still

1:32:23

surprisingly relevant today, even if

1:32:26

they sound like very simple delineations.

1:32:31

Of course, Lily also had another

1:32:33

concern, which was to keep his head on his

1:32:35

shoulders. Right. And

1:32:38

we don't generally have that worry

1:32:40

anymore. But on the other hand, it

1:32:43

might be, you know, some astrologers might

1:32:45

feel, well, I'll pay that

1:32:47

price. If I have that kind of influence, I'll pay

1:32:49

the price of having to worry about keeping my head

1:32:51

on my shoulders. Is it worth it? I don't know.

1:32:54

I mean, be careful what you wish for. Yeah,

1:32:56

no, I agree. An anecdote

1:32:58

I've got from

1:33:01

going back to the

1:33:03

late 70s when

1:33:06

the Prime Minister of Pakistan,

1:33:08

Mr. Bhutto, had

1:33:10

been imprisoned. And

1:33:14

I knew a Pakistani astrologer in

1:33:16

London. And I

1:33:19

asked him about that, about

1:33:22

this, because something I always try to extract

1:33:24

from astrologers, what they're actually doing. And

1:33:28

he said that he had been

1:33:30

asked by the Pakistani government what

1:33:33

the fate of Mr. Bhutto would

1:33:35

likely be. And

1:33:39

this astrologer explained to me he had family in Pakistan. And

1:33:45

this was, you know, the military government in general, the Al-Hak

1:33:47

had just taken over. And

1:33:50

so the astrologer told

1:33:52

me he looked at Bhutto's chart and said,

1:33:55

on the basis of a reading

1:33:58

of the rules of the Indian

1:34:01

astrology that Bhutto would meet a

1:34:03

violent death. Wow. So

1:34:05

he tried to be as neutral

1:34:08

as possible, but he said that and of course

1:34:10

Bhutto was executed. So

1:34:14

I've been

1:34:16

mulling that over a

1:34:18

lot for decades actually since that

1:34:20

happened because what position was

1:34:22

the astrologer in? Could the astrologer

1:34:24

have said, oh no, you know,

1:34:26

Bhutto will die

1:34:30

in his old age? I

1:34:33

don't know what if the rules of the horoscope

1:34:35

had not said that, but they genuinely

1:34:37

said he will die a violent death.

1:34:41

And how did he feel

1:34:43

about having

1:34:46

family in Pakistan who were potentially at

1:34:48

risk? So there's

1:34:50

an example of an astrologer who

1:34:52

was in the same situation

1:34:55

as somebody might have been in England

1:34:59

in the civil war in Republic. Interesting

1:35:01

to know what significators

1:35:03

he was saying that on the basis

1:35:05

of an afflicted Mars

1:35:08

or a Pluto aspect or

1:35:10

who knows? Could people

1:35:12

well now will never know? No. Yeah.

1:35:18

So one other thing that

1:35:20

you mentioned from the notes that Nick

1:35:22

pointed out would be good discussion points,

1:35:24

but a distinction perhaps between the high

1:35:26

middling and low astrology that you

1:35:28

make and that

1:35:32

because astrology was affecting

1:35:34

all different levels of society, that there were

1:35:36

probably many different, a wide

1:35:39

range of different conceptualizations of it,

1:35:41

as well as a wide

1:35:43

range of, let's

1:35:45

say, proficiency or accuracy

1:35:47

on the part of astrologers who are practicing

1:35:50

it. One of the things I noticed that

1:35:52

was interesting in the book is sometimes you

1:35:54

have astrologers reacting and acknowledging

1:35:56

that there's bad

1:35:58

astrology being done. out there and

1:36:01

that the field somehow has to be improved?

1:36:04

Are there going to be better standards because

1:36:06

of a perception that maybe there were some

1:36:08

practitioners doing things that were not

1:36:11

so good or unethical perhaps? Well,

1:36:14

in that sense, of course, astrology, the

1:36:17

position that astrology found itself in would

1:36:19

not be particularly different than any other

1:36:21

profession in the sense

1:36:23

that there was a struggle to maintain some kind

1:36:26

of standards internally.

1:36:30

I think the

1:36:32

distinction between high middling and low astrology

1:36:35

was intellectually useful or

1:36:37

practical. It

1:36:40

implied that at the label of the

1:36:42

laboring poor, which was the

1:36:44

dominant part of society up until around the

1:36:47

first World War, the beginning of the

1:36:49

first World War, that's a long time, that

1:36:52

there was a kind of non-horoscopic

1:36:54

astrology centered on

1:36:57

Old Moorzalmanak, which

1:36:59

was very much concerned with the

1:37:01

natural world and natural cycles that these

1:37:03

people's lives depended upon

1:37:06

literally, weather

1:37:10

prediction and crop

1:37:13

failures and diseases.

1:37:15

There's a collective emphasis

1:37:17

there. And

1:37:19

in the middling astrologers, very

1:37:22

much fewer of them, much

1:37:25

more metropolitan or at least urban if

1:37:27

not metropolitan. The

1:37:29

people I referred to earlier as, say,

1:37:32

schoolmasters and surveyors and amateur

1:37:35

astronomers and so on, were, say, amateur astronomers.

1:37:37

They were very good astronomers. They were very

1:37:40

serious. They just weren't completely

1:37:42

professionalized yet. And

1:37:46

you had a lot of judicial astrology there,

1:37:48

and you had some continuing, bitter arguments. I

1:37:51

mean, whenever there's more than two astrologers

1:37:53

in a room, there's going to be arguments. And

1:37:57

then at the top, you had a return

1:37:59

to collectivity. in the sense of

1:38:01

philosophical generalizations.

1:38:03

And here's where the comments and the

1:38:06

effects of comments came in, because the

1:38:08

effects of comments would not be limited

1:38:10

to any specific individuals. They

1:38:12

would apply to entire societies. And

1:38:16

I still think by

1:38:19

and large that tripartite

1:38:22

distinction kind of holds up reasonably

1:38:25

well. Yeah.

1:38:30

And is it also connected to some extent

1:38:32

with one of the things that's notable about

1:38:36

Lily is that he wrote the

1:38:38

first major English language textbook on

1:38:40

astrology. And prior to

1:38:43

that time, textbooks were written in Latin,

1:38:45

which was the educated language in

1:38:48

Europe for hundreds of years. But

1:38:51

was there a desire, partially on

1:38:53

his part among Lily or

1:38:55

other contemporaries, to almost democratize

1:38:58

astrology or make it more

1:39:00

available to people who only spoke

1:39:02

English and didn't speak Latin?

1:39:05

Yes, there was very much a deliberate program.

1:39:08

And alongside that,

1:39:10

a great, a

1:39:12

lot of the pharmacopoeia, the sort

1:39:14

of the guide to medicines

1:39:17

that was in Latin, that was

1:39:19

used by medical doctors in the

1:39:22

mid 17th century, was

1:39:24

kept in Latin in order to

1:39:26

prevent people from, partly

1:39:30

in order to prevent people from dosing

1:39:34

themselves, because they couldn't read it.

1:39:37

Another great deal of it was translated

1:39:39

into English as part of a program

1:39:41

to democratize access

1:39:44

to medicine, access to herbs.

1:39:46

Culpepper put a lot of

1:39:48

effort into his herbals for

1:39:50

common, that common people

1:39:52

could read and practice medicine for

1:39:54

themselves without having to pay doctor's

1:39:56

fees. So it was a...

1:40:00

idealistic program at the

1:40:02

time that astrology was very much a part of.

1:40:06

So that's another way in which power then

1:40:08

is wrapped up to some extent and that

1:40:10

there was a shift of power from... Away

1:40:13

from the elites, yeah. Right.

1:40:16

That's right, that's right. And they hated

1:40:18

it. They resisted it like crazy. They

1:40:22

do as elites too. Right.

1:40:25

The medical community in particular seemed

1:40:27

to be really angry at the

1:40:29

cold pepper. Yes, absolutely,

1:40:31

that's right. Okay.

1:40:35

So that then maybe is part of the

1:40:37

reason then you have this surge

1:40:39

of this proliferation of astrology and explosion of

1:40:42

astrology for the next 20 years. But

1:40:44

then I guess one

1:40:46

of the questions I had is, does the

1:40:49

sometimes the popularity of astrology, because it seems

1:40:51

like astrology and its popularity goes

1:40:53

in waves of periods of great flourishing.

1:40:56

And then there's a drop off

1:40:58

sometimes or a counter movement against

1:41:00

it occasionally, which has many different

1:41:02

reasons, but is

1:41:05

perhaps some of the drop

1:41:07

off partially related to just

1:41:09

that it became something that

1:41:11

was super popular and widely

1:41:13

embraced then by much larger

1:41:17

groups of people than prior to that point?

1:41:20

Well, part of the process of

1:41:23

what happened in the 18th century, which

1:41:26

E. P. Thompson describes

1:41:29

very well, is that

1:41:32

the formerly tripartite division

1:41:34

of aristocracy, middle class

1:41:38

and working class or a

1:41:40

laboring poor started

1:41:42

to change slightly from the

1:41:45

laboring people

1:41:47

started to become moving into the

1:41:49

cities and the middle

1:41:52

class became much more influential and

1:41:56

powerful. And so there

1:41:58

was this kind of. The

1:42:00

tripartite model was kind of replaced by

1:42:03

a dual model of the plebeian. On

1:42:10

one side of the line is plebeians, which

1:42:12

are kind of a combination of lower middle classes

1:42:15

and working classes. On

1:42:17

the other side of the line is, well,

1:42:21

you could say the gentry. So it

1:42:23

is an amalgamation of the upper middle classes

1:42:26

and the aristocracy.

1:42:30

Now when that started,

1:42:33

to the extent that that

1:42:35

took place, astrology became, except

1:42:37

for among very few individuals,

1:42:40

firmly identified as plebeians. Because

1:42:44

apparently only those kinds of people

1:42:46

were taking it seriously anymore. So

1:42:50

astrology suffered greatly from that, not

1:42:53

in the sense that there's anything wrong with being taken

1:42:56

up by so-called plebeians, but in

1:42:58

the sense that it was deprived of

1:43:00

the intellectual

1:43:03

stimulation of higher

1:43:05

education, for example, of being studied in

1:43:07

universities. It became harder to study it

1:43:09

in universities, harder to realize

1:43:11

the tradition, harder to study the history

1:43:14

of it, among other things.

1:43:17

And that didn't start to change

1:43:19

until the upper

1:43:22

portion of the dualism, the gentry part,

1:43:25

I've called, I think there's another word

1:43:27

for it, it's not coming to me

1:43:29

at the moment, started

1:43:32

to get so complex that it broke

1:43:35

into different factions and you had the

1:43:37

Zadkills and Raphael's back in

1:43:39

London talking about astrology

1:43:41

again. So

1:43:46

the twists and turns are complex,

1:43:49

but astrology's always stayed

1:43:52

with it and reappeared again in

1:43:54

some form or another. I have no doubt

1:43:56

it will continue to do that. It's

1:43:59

incredibly about it. Yeah,

1:44:02

and it goes through those those waves,

1:44:04

but there's something very much that persists.

1:44:07

Yeah, yeah. At the

1:44:09

very least in the popular

1:44:11

imagination. So when, as

1:44:14

we're getting towards the end of this last

1:44:16

point is one of the things I was

1:44:18

really struck by in your documentation is that

1:44:20

the shift of the decline starts

1:44:22

happening very radically like we were talking

1:44:24

about almost like a 20 year period

1:44:27

here between. And it's like

1:44:29

Lily publishes his Christian astrology

1:44:31

in 1647, and there's

1:44:33

like a like a heyday for a

1:44:36

decade or two. But by 1660 the

1:44:39

tides are starting to shift already very

1:44:41

rapidly, right? Yes, that's absolutely right. It

1:44:43

was astonishingly rapid. It's one of the

1:44:45

things that I wanted one of

1:44:47

the reasons why I wanted to study it to

1:44:51

try and figure that out. Right.

1:44:54

What are the points you emphasize? Go ahead,

1:44:57

Nick. No, I'm trying to think

1:44:59

of the parallels in the modern

1:45:02

world where we

1:45:04

might have such culture

1:45:06

shifts from which it's very

1:45:10

difficult to return. And

1:45:16

I mean, one that occurs

1:45:18

to me, nothing

1:45:21

to do with astrology at all, is

1:45:26

the change in status of gay people

1:45:29

and gay marriage. So I think, you know, when I was

1:45:33

young, homosexuality was illegal

1:45:35

and no chance of becoming legal

1:45:38

in the UK and across much of the Western

1:45:40

world. And then a shift has

1:45:42

happened that has permeated

1:45:45

the whole of our, or

1:45:47

much of our society, can't speak for the USA,

1:45:50

but in the UK, pretty

1:45:52

much the whole of society at all levels.

1:45:56

Such it would be very difficult to go back.

1:46:00

So there

1:46:03

are, there are

1:46:05

parallels, but it's still, it's still what

1:46:08

happened the 17th century with astrology was

1:46:11

was quite remarkable in the sense that

1:46:13

it had this, the high

1:46:15

point. And

1:46:17

then the high point straight away, giving way

1:46:20

to this disintegration of

1:46:23

intellectual respectability, the

1:46:25

Orman acts survive lowest rajis

1:46:28

survives because it's

1:46:30

consumers don't care about

1:46:33

sophisticated theories of the universe or

1:46:35

whatever. And

1:46:37

they're probably not bothered by evangelical

1:46:40

Christian position to astrology, but

1:46:43

other levels at

1:46:45

the high level in the middle of the level. It's

1:46:50

kind of doesn't quite, as you said, doesn't

1:46:52

totally die, but it

1:46:55

certainly gets knocked to the

1:46:57

margins. Yeah, I mean,

1:46:59

another example might be just consider

1:47:01

the difference in dominant cultural values

1:47:04

in the in the Western world

1:47:06

between the late 60s and

1:47:09

the 80s, the mid 80s. Not

1:47:13