and St. Augustine on Astrology
How were astrology and witchcraft differentiated in legal and moral terms and to what authorities did prosecutors and inquisitors submit? Biblical verses, from the Old and New Testaments, were extremely common and effective allusions to which to appeal when proclaiming the immorality and sinfulness of astrology, witchcraft, and prophecy, and there is no dearth of Biblical quotations in support of this condemnation.[1] For example: “Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray…it shall be night to you, without divination. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall cover their lips, for there is no answer from God” (Micah 3:5-7).[2] However, as is often the case with Biblical references, more than one meaning can be extracted. On the one hand, these verses display an obvious aversion to the conceit of those who believe they can endeavor to know the will of God, yet there is no outright disapproval of this divination because prophecy was and still is a vital element of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In other words, there is nothing wrong with the act itself, merely in those who attempt it without the inspiration or the due credit attributed to God. This may be defined as the difference between divination and revelation.
Similarly, in the midst of his great exhortation against idolatry and image worship in Deuteronomy, Moses offers this warning to those who would divert their attention from God to other matters: “And beware lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and worship them and serve them, things which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven”(Deuteronomy 4:19). This cause is taken up again in the Book of Zephaniah, in which the Lord proclaims that he will “sweep away…those who bow down on the roofs to the host of the heavens” (1:3-5). These verses may be in reference to the original Jewish innovation of monotheism in an age when most of the Hebrews’ cultural neighbors were polytheists, some of whom worshiped the stars and planets directly as gods and goddesses. More deeply, these quotations serve as a reminder that the Creator is not to be confused with the creation and that nature-worship is just as sinful as idol-worship. Yet, in terms of the comparison of astrology with witchcraft in relation to their reception by religious and secular authorities, one must not confound worshiping the heavens with studying the heavens. This is one way that witchcraft was specifically differentiated from astrology—the latter was viewed as a scholarly enterprise separate from Christian worship while the former was believed to derive its information directly from the worship and divination of demons. Astrology dealt with the objective study of the heavens without necessarily confounding Christian worship while witchcraft dealt directly with the antithesis to that worship. The Book of Isaiah proposes an explanation of the correlation between astrological determinism and the functioning of God in the world. It states,
Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children”: These two things shall come to you in a moment in one day; the loss of children and widowhood shall come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and the great power of your enchantments. You felt secure in your wickedness, you said, “No one sees me”; your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me.” But evil shall come upon you, for which you cannot atone; disaster shall fall upon you, which you will not be able to expiate; and ruin shall come on you suddenly, of which you know nothing. Stand fast in your enchantments and your many sorceries, with which you have labored from your youth; perhaps you may be able to succeed, perhaps you may inspire terror. You are wearied with your many counsels; let them stand forth and save you, those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, who at the new moons predict what shall befall you. (Isaiah 47:8-13)[3]
The Christian writers of the first few centuries after Christ, especially the Church Fathers and in particular Augustine of Hippo (354-430), urged new Christians to abandon old pagan superstitions such as astrology in favor of free will and the option of salvation through Christ. Was it not the very free will of Christians that gave them earnest to forsake a worldly life in favor of Christ? Augustine had dabbled in many philosophies in the personal quest that would eventually lead him to Christianity, including Manichaeism and Greek skepticism, both of which were more receptive to astrology. Although the argument between faith and reason is not in the crux of this investigation, for astrology could rely on either or both depending on the practitioner, it is interesting to note that in his denunciation, Augustine appealed more to reason than to faith to counter the argument for astrology. Twins, he writes, are by definition born at a time when the stars should rule over them to a similar degree and that if astrology were a valid science then we should expect to see them live their lives with comparable personalities, statuses, and fates. However,
[The astrologers] have never been able to explain why twins are so different in what they do and achieve, in their professions and skills, in the honors they receive, and in other aspects of their lives and deaths. In all such matters, twins are often less like each other than complete strangers; yet, twins are born with practically no interval of time between their births and are conceived in precisely the same moment of a single sexual semination.[4]
Augustine had attributed the occasional success of astrologers to simple luck and had said that “that guesswork was often borne out of mere chance. If a man made a great many predictions, several of them would later prove to be true, but he could not know it at the time and would only hit upon them by chance.”[5] The more likely explanation for the similarity in the life twins, said Augustine, in reference to Hippocrates, was that they shared similar medical fates “since their parents’ condition at the time of conception could easily affect the embryos, and it would be no wonder if the twins should be born with the same kind of health, since they had developed in the same way in their mother’s womb.”[6] Another practical example was related to him by a friend, Firminus, whose father was a respectable practitioner of astrological divination. Firminus’ father discovered that one of his slaves was expected to give birth at the same time as his wife, and he decided that this would be the supreme trial of the effect of the stars on the course of human lives:
Both were delivered at the same instant; so that both were constrained to allow the same constellations, even to the minutest points, the one for his son, the other for his newborn slave. For so soon as the women began to be in labor, they each gave notice to the other what was fallen out in their houses, and had messengers ready to send to one another, so soon as they had notice of the actual birth, of which they had easily provided, each in his own province, to provide instant intelligence. Thus then the messengers of the respective parties met, he averred, at such an equal distance from either house, that neither of them could make out any difference in the position of the stars, or any other minutest points; and yet Firminus, born in a high estate in his parents’ house, ran his course through the gilded paths of life, was increased in riches, raised to honors; whereas that slave continued to serve his masters, without any relaxation of his yoke, as Firminus, who knew him, told me.[7]
Despite his unwavering dismissal of astrology as a means of obfuscating the free will of man, Augustine, like most other Christian thinkers with a classical education, affirmed that the stars could in fact have an influence on the earth and the material of the sublunar sphere and that this could affect man insomuch as man was subject to the happenings of nature. That is, man’s will was untouchable, but his body, being simply matter, was susceptible to astrological authority:
It is not absurd to say, with reference only to physical differences, that there are certain sidereal [i.e. stellar] influences. We see that seasons of the year change with the approach and the receding of the sun. And with the waxing and waning of the moon, we see certain kinds of things grow and shrink, such as sea urchins and oysters, and the marvelous tides of the ocean. But the choices of the will are not subject to the positions of the stars.[8]
Augustine had been less dismissive of the comparable concept of fate, by which he meant that which “happens without cause or rational explanation, and that fate is what is bound to happen, in spite even of the will of God or of men,”[9] but he stated that the disparity was only in the symbol used to describe those acts which seemed to happen randomly. Among those who regard such acts as the will of fate “but mean by fate the will and power of God, they should keep their conception, but change their expression.”[10]
[1] Other important Biblical quotations concerning astrology, witchcraft, and prophecy include: Exodus 22:18 (for elaboration of Exodus, see Sir Christopher Heydon’s quote in Post 7), Deuteronomy 18:10-11 (witchcraft), Leviticus 19:26 & 31 and 20:27 (witchcraft and wizardry), 1 Samuel 25:3-25 (witchcraft), and Jeremiah 10:2-3 & 23:9-22 (see Footnote 8 in Post 7 for more information on Jeremiah). The confluence of the scientific enterprise with religion was an aspect of astrology that has been found in many separate astrological traditions (notably the Chinese and Mayan versions), but this merger did not, at first, hold up to the rigorous moral standard of the new Christian religion sweeping the Mediterranean region as it had once enjoyed with Greek paganism and philosophy. It was only when certain natural philosophers were able to reconcile this science with Christianity that it managed to reestablish itself as one of the premier faculties of study. See next post for more details.
[2] Biblical quotes come from The New Oxford Annotated Bible: Revised Standard Version: 1962 and 1973, Oxford University Press.
[3] The annotations in the Oxford edition of the Bible state that this chapter is meant to “emphasize God’s control over history and his action within it,” but the ancient historian D. Brendan Nagle goes so far as to state that this passage was included to display the Israelites’ satisfaction with the Persian conquest of Babylon and the destruction of their idolatrous temples in 539 B.C.E. as well as their satisfaction that despite all their claims to the ability of prognostication, the Babylonians were unable to foresee their own downfall, thus proving the error of astrology and the power of God in the world. See Nagle, D. Brendan, The Ancient World: A Social and Cultural History. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002, p. 70.
[4]Augustine of Hippo. City of God. trans. by Demetrius B. Zema and Gerald G. Walsh. New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1950, Book V, Chap. 1, p. 243. This is also quoted in Lindberg, David C., “Science and the Early Christian Church.” The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. ed. Michael H. Shank, readings from Isis (first published 1983, 74: 509-530). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 143.
[5] Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. by R.S. Pine-Coffin, New York: Penguin Books, Ltd, 1961. Book VII, Chap. 6, p. 140.
[6] Augustine, City of God, Book V, Chap. 2, p. 244.
[7] Augustine, Confessions, Book VII, Chap. 6, p. 141. Also quoted in Boorstin, Daniel J. The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself. New York: Vintage Books, 1983, p. 23 and 24. David C. Lindberg also mentions in his essay in Isis that the “twins” argument is not original to Augustine.
[8]Augustine of Hippo, City of God, Book V, Chap. 6, p. 251, also quoted in Lindberg, David C., The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992, p. 277.
[9] Ibid. Book V, Chap. 1, p. 241.
[10] Ibid. p. 242.
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