Oriental Astrology

“Know thyself”, the motto of the ancients, is the simplest but the grandest sermon that can ring within our ears. By the knowledge of nature do we honour nature; let us then consider the study that can give such knowledge; for by the knowledge of self may we master self, and by the improvement of self may we also improve mankind-to the advancement of the Race, to the honour of the world, and to the glory of those who, in the march of time, will fill life’s broken ranks, and some day take our place.

To consider the origin of this science, we must take our thoughts back to the earliest days of the world’s history, and furthermore to the consideration of a people the oldest of all, yet one that has survived the fall of empires, nations, and dynasties, and who are to-today as characteristic and as full of individuality as they were when thousands of years ago the first records of history were written. The Hindus, a people whose philosophy and wisdom are every day being more and more revived. Loking back to earliest days of the history of the known world, we find that the first linguistic records belong to the people under consideration, and date back to that far-distant cycle of time known as the Aryan civilization. Beyond history we cannot go; but the monuments and cave temples of India, according to the testimony of archaeologists, all point to a time so far beyond the scant history at our disposal, that in the examination of such matters our greatest knowledge is dwarfed into infantile nothingness – our age and era are but the swaddling-clothes of child; our manhood that of the infant in the arms of the eternity of time.

In endeavouring to trace the origin of Astrology, we are carried back to the confines of a prehistoric age. History tells us that in the remotest period of the Aryan civilazation it had even a literature are even now extant, we must therefore conclude that it had a still more remote infancy; but into that night of antiquity we dare not venture.

As regards the people who first understood and practised this study of the astrology, we find undisputed proofs of their learning and knowledge. Long before Rome or Greece or Israel was even heard of, the monuments of India point back to an age of learning beyond, and still beyond. From the astronomical calculations that the figures in their temples represent, it has been estimated that the Hindus understood the precession of the equinoxes centuries before the Christian era. In some of the ancient cave temples, the mystic figures of the Sphinx silently tell that such knowledge had been possessed and used in advance of all those nations afterward so celebrated for their learning. It has been demonstrated that to make a change from one sign to another in the zodiacal course of the sun must have occupied at the least 2,140 years, and how many centuries elapsed before such changes came to be observed and noticed it is impossible even to estimate.

The Greek civilazation has in many ways been considered the highest and most intellectual in the world, and here it was that astrology – from the Greek –grew, flourished, and found favour in the sight of those of those whose names are as stars of honour in the firmament of knowledge. We find that Anaxagoras taught and practised it in 423 B.C. We find that Hispanus discovered, on an altar dedicated to Hermes, a book on astrology written in gold letters, which he sent as a present to Alexander the Great, as “a study worthy the attention of an elevated and inquiring mind.” We find it also sanctioned by such men of learning as Aristotle, Plato, Paracelsus, Cardamis, Albertus Magnus, the Emperor Augustus, and many others of note.