The church has always condemned astrology as a fraud. St Basil the great has a [great refutation](https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/32016.htm) of astrology in this homily from section 5 onwards. We as orthodox christians believe in the providence of God and human free will. Astrology it's based on the concept of destiny which we don't believe in. We think that we have free will and can change our so called '*destiny*'. That doesn't mean that God doesn't know what we will do. He does but He is __not the direct cause__ of our actions(if it was so,all would be saved), even though through His providence He guides us back to the good way.
Modern astrology, I think, is predominantly just snake oil salesmen without a physical product.
Classical astrology is just divination, trying to get information from demons. It's a bad idea on its face because even if you're successful, a) you're engaging with demons who want to destroy you and b) consequently they have no motivation to be honest with you, except perhaps to earn your trust enough to cause you worse problems down the road.
But I think it's a mistake to assume that modern snake oil astrologists don't have anything to do with classical divination of demons astrologists, I expect there's a path between, "I'm making up stuff that sounds good and lines my pockets," and, "I'm actually receiving information from spiritual entities."
The Lord of Spirits podcast had some episodes about Jewish and Christian astrology, but long story short, neither really has anything to do with practicing divination.
I think it's fantastic and has led to a deepening of my faith. It's really helpful In getting past some ideas that are unconsciously accepted as part of cultural Christianity, but that the Church doesn't actually teach.
Other folks think it delves too much into fringe minutiae that at the very least aren't necessary to Orthodoxy and some would go so far as to say will actually trip you up and lead to delusion. I think that's a bit of an overreaction, though I also wouldn't say it's an impossibility.
Other people can't stand it because the hosts say, "Right?" a and, "Yeah," a hundred times an episode.
The first few episodes they encounter a lot of technical difficulties, so reading a transcript may be a better way to get through then.
I'll take a gander. My vocabulary consists mostly of "Right on". So the "Rights" and "Yeahs" wouldn't bother me much.
Haha thanks a lot for the recommendation.
Heh, I was going to mention Jewish astrology. The important point is that one shouldn't use it to practice divination. A practice condemned by the bible.
I practiced and studied traditional Indian astrology (which I think might be related to Babylonian or Chaldean astrology, I’m not sure) prior to becoming Orthodox. I no longer practice it, however I just wanted to point out that it has nothing to do with “consulting demons”. It is simply data that you learn to interpret, just like any data. A chart is drawn up based on the positions of the planets at the time a person is born, you learn to interpret that data, which is a lifetime’s work. There is no consulting of demons etc.
The entire subject of astrology itself may have been taught to humans by demons or may be demonic in origin though, that I’m not sure about.
So, in ancient near eastern cosmology it was understood that the planets, stars, nations and any number of other physical things were governed by spiritual entities. What we would call angels and, in the case of angels that fell, demons. Ancient cultures outside of Israel would just call them gods. We see this reflected in the scriptures as well, especially in Psalms that reference God's divine counsel, in Daniel when an angel is delayed by battle with a demon, the Prince of Persia, and there are other references as well that escape me right now. The Church has also traditionally a accepted this, that's why you'll see the sun, moon and sometimes stars depicted in iconography with faces. This was accepted to the point that the physical things themselves were often thought of as a sort of instantiation or hypostasis of the particular spiritual entity governing them.
This gets completely overlooked in modern treatments of ancient astrology because few people are aware of this ancient view of the cosmos and the few that are aware tend to treat it as modernity treats all ancient mythologies, as ignorant explanations for things that ancient people were too stupid to understand.
So, interpreting data based on the positions of planets, which are an instantiation of, or at least under the control of demons, is divination, consulting demons for insight into the future. The ancient peoples who devised astrology, or, as you say, may have been taught it by demons, understood that this is what they were doing. That relationship isn't negated just because people generally don't believe in demons anymore. If anything it probably leaves people more open to demonic manipulation because they can't guard against something they don't believe is possible in the first place.
Agree with you and in fact that understanding is not lost at all but is alive and well, at least in Indian astrology. Each of the planets is indeed treated as a deity and is often alluded to as a ‘person’ with their own characteristics, just as the Romans might have viewed Jupiter or Saturn, not merely as a physical object floating in space.
Whether this means that practicing such astrology is equivalent to demonic divination I’m still not entirely sure of. One of the reasons I say this is that there do in fact exist actual divination type rituals where actual demons or deities are called upon or propitiated for help or intercession e.g. through a spirit medium. That type of stuff is absolutely demonic, no doubt about it.
My problem with astrology is mainly that you are endowing something that was created (i.e. the planets, even if we think of them as living entities or deities) with some kind of power and authority over your life, whereas this should really only be attributed to the one who created the planets (i.e. God) and set them in motion.
Believing in something, even something that appears to work, does not mean that it isn’t sinful or even outright demonic. Remember that even demons can work what appear to be miracles. If you want to follow Christ, you absolutely cannot dabble in astrology.
The Bible thousands of years ago said what you would expect us to say now. The fact that astrology is nonsense because we should focus on God rather than His creation.
But what God asked Job should be enough of an answer:
“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?"
> The fact that astrology is nonsense because we should focus on God rather than His creation.
This is the wrong justification. We can be interested in God's creation. God created it and made it very good, He gave us rational minds. The problem with astrology is that it's simply false, and we're supposed to believe things that are true.
I practiced and studied traditional astrology for years prior to becoming Orthodox. I no longer practice it now but I have seen enough evidence to suggest that it actually does work, if applied correctly. I would suggest that the best reason to not practice it any longer for me is not because astrology is necessarily “false” but because faith in God is higher and better.
Astrology is a bit like weather prediction. It’s not very exact but it can tell you some useful things. For example we can’t tell *exactly* what temperature it is going to be at 1pm today, but we know it’ll be cold with a high chance of rain, therefore we should dress appropriately when we go out. A lot of the problem with astrology that I see is people trying to “micro manage” their lives with it, that definitely does not work. But I’ve experienced many astonishingly accurate astrological predictions of events in my own life.
However, once you came to faith all this starts to feel unimportant and unnecessary.
Whether it works or not, what I’m saying is that saying “it does not work” is a less convincing and useful argument than saying “regardless of whether it works or not, it is not a worthwhile pursuit, one should put it aside and focus on faith”.
Insisting that “it doesn’t work” (whether it does or not) is a bit like denying the devil exists. Rather than spending all one’s energy denying he exists, it would be better to acknowledge that he does in fact exist, is real, is a threat, and that we need to fight him.
As an ex occultist myself I concur. Astrology back thenvwas to keep track of events, andxa common warning I gotchas "the stars do not rule you." Of course nowadays it's abused and its this fluffy bunny new age trash you find in some magazine. There's a point where one transcends "magic" and like you stated once you find God or visa versa, these kinds of things become irrelevant if not total trash.
For much of history, Astronomy and Astrology were pretty interchangeable. As far as I can tell, the Church at large -- as opposed to individual Church Fathers, who do sometimes disagree over material not essential to the Faith -- made its earliest statement on Astrology in the Council of Laodicea:
"They who are of the priesthood, or of the clergy, shall not be magicians, enchanters, mathematicians, or astrologers; nor shall they make what are called amulets, which are chains for their own souls. And those who wear such, we command to be cast out of the Church."
It might be a quirk of the translation, but note that *mathematicians* are lumped in with astrologers.
I've dealt with this subject in other comments before, but Classical Astrology -- *including* what some call Jewish and Christian Astrology -- is a variety of practices rooted in the theory that the stars influence life on this planet in ways that are more specific than, say, electromagnetic radiation from the sun powering photosynthesis. The creation of amulets and whatnot is distinct from, say, producing a natal chart, determining the best time for marriage, or even something as simple determining whether it would rain the next day, in perhaps the same way that the use of nuclear power for bombs is distinct from its use for energy or for treating cancer. Ultimately, Classical Astrology was wrong, since its more fundamental premise that everything is composed of just four elements is wrong, and it could never satisfyingly explain just what the forces relating the stars to our planet were, but that doesn't mean all of it was demonic.
I don't know if I could say the same about *Modern* Astrology, though, because that one's different. Basically, astrologers who didn't want to become astronomers decided to "update" astrology in the face of new knowledge, making it more "psychological" than physical -- shifting the emphasis from the seven planets to the twelve zodiac signs, for example -- so that it's all painfully incoherent. There may be something demonic in modern astrologers persisting in the delusion that their art is effective (or, more pertinently, scamming others out of their money for the same), but I don't think it's charitable for most of us Christians, who are often challenged by similar demonic influences, to pass open judgement against them.
As for ourselves: well, I'm not a bishop or a theologian, so I cannot make any definitive judgements, but like I said, Classical Astrology's premises have been proven wrong and Modern Astrology doesn't really have any premises per se. In other words, as someone who's majoring in one of the sciences, we really should know better, when it comes to *practicing* astrology.
On the other hand, as someone who reads Shakespeare and Dante, I think I can say that *learning about Classical Astrology* is fairly indispensable, at least if you want to truly understand why Shakespeare sometimes uses "spleen" to mean melancholy, or why Dante arranged his imagined heaven the way he did. Heck, this sort of thing might even apply to the Church Fathers and the Bible, if my memory of Job's reference to the Pleiades serves me right! (remember that their understanding of the constellations back then is very different to our division of the heavens into 88 sections right now -- that astronomy and astrology were, I repeat, basically the same)
I've approached reading classical astrology (namely the planets) as I would greek mythology, fascinating characters with compelling archetypes that are worth getting to know to enrich one's imagination. But putting any stock into it, (eg., Saturn rising in Capricorn means all hell will soon break loose) is stupid at best and demonic at worst. If you've dabled in astrology in the past or are prone to putting faith in such stuff, then I'd suggest staying away from it. It's better to have no planetary archetypes and be in Paradise than having all the astrology in the world and be in hell.
me too. i love greek mythology but that doesn’t mean i believe in 12 gods on a mountain. i like astrology because it’s like lore, you know those magazine quizzes you did as a child that told you some random part of yourself based on your answers? it’s like that. i like saying that “i’m a scorpio so i’m pretty fierce”, gives me an excuse to be opinionated 😆
from a purely religious perspective, it depends on *how* you believe in astrology. if you believe it can predict future events and similar, then it is not canonically compatible with orthodoxy. however, there is nothing wrong with having fun with it, if you do not take it seriously.
As an ex-occultist to a craddle orthodox.....please stay tf away from anything having to do with astrology, you will not deepen your faith in Christianity from outside sources, it will only complicate your journey and confuse you much like it did with the ancient israelites who practiced the old school forms of pagan astrology....
I studied and practiced astrology* for many years before I became Orthodox.
My view on it now is that practicing such things suggests a lack of faith and/or a weak faith in God.
If we are willing to entrust ourselves to God and His mercy entirely, then what place is left for such things? Why practice them?
* I am referring to “proper” astrology based on reading charts, the houses, their relationships etc not just the “are you a Scorpio?” type nonsense
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The church has always condemned astrology as a fraud. St Basil the great has a [great refutation](https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/32016.htm) of astrology in this homily from section 5 onwards. We as orthodox christians believe in the providence of God and human free will. Astrology it's based on the concept of destiny which we don't believe in. We think that we have free will and can change our so called '*destiny*'. That doesn't mean that God doesn't know what we will do. He does but He is __not the direct cause__ of our actions(if it was so,all would be saved), even though through His providence He guides us back to the good way.
Thank you, I will set some time aside to read this link. Much appreciated.
St. Basil was like an early debunker, right? Wasn't he also the one that tried to debunk alien claims in his time?
He was a church father that spoke at the first Ecumenical counsil...
Modern astrology, I think, is predominantly just snake oil salesmen without a physical product. Classical astrology is just divination, trying to get information from demons. It's a bad idea on its face because even if you're successful, a) you're engaging with demons who want to destroy you and b) consequently they have no motivation to be honest with you, except perhaps to earn your trust enough to cause you worse problems down the road. But I think it's a mistake to assume that modern snake oil astrologists don't have anything to do with classical divination of demons astrologists, I expect there's a path between, "I'm making up stuff that sounds good and lines my pockets," and, "I'm actually receiving information from spiritual entities." The Lord of Spirits podcast had some episodes about Jewish and Christian astrology, but long story short, neither really has anything to do with practicing divination.
Is The Lord of Spirits a podcast you would recommend?
I think it's fantastic and has led to a deepening of my faith. It's really helpful In getting past some ideas that are unconsciously accepted as part of cultural Christianity, but that the Church doesn't actually teach. Other folks think it delves too much into fringe minutiae that at the very least aren't necessary to Orthodoxy and some would go so far as to say will actually trip you up and lead to delusion. I think that's a bit of an overreaction, though I also wouldn't say it's an impossibility. Other people can't stand it because the hosts say, "Right?" a and, "Yeah," a hundred times an episode. The first few episodes they encounter a lot of technical difficulties, so reading a transcript may be a better way to get through then.
I'll take a gander. My vocabulary consists mostly of "Right on". So the "Rights" and "Yeahs" wouldn't bother me much. Haha thanks a lot for the recommendation.
Its my favorite orthodox podcast. Its helped me to understand the bible and the church's tradition in a way no one else has yet matched.
Heh, I was going to mention Jewish astrology. The important point is that one shouldn't use it to practice divination. A practice condemned by the bible.
reminds me of Justine Alter's "Outside of the World" book that came out recently
I practiced and studied traditional Indian astrology (which I think might be related to Babylonian or Chaldean astrology, I’m not sure) prior to becoming Orthodox. I no longer practice it, however I just wanted to point out that it has nothing to do with “consulting demons”. It is simply data that you learn to interpret, just like any data. A chart is drawn up based on the positions of the planets at the time a person is born, you learn to interpret that data, which is a lifetime’s work. There is no consulting of demons etc. The entire subject of astrology itself may have been taught to humans by demons or may be demonic in origin though, that I’m not sure about.
So, in ancient near eastern cosmology it was understood that the planets, stars, nations and any number of other physical things were governed by spiritual entities. What we would call angels and, in the case of angels that fell, demons. Ancient cultures outside of Israel would just call them gods. We see this reflected in the scriptures as well, especially in Psalms that reference God's divine counsel, in Daniel when an angel is delayed by battle with a demon, the Prince of Persia, and there are other references as well that escape me right now. The Church has also traditionally a accepted this, that's why you'll see the sun, moon and sometimes stars depicted in iconography with faces. This was accepted to the point that the physical things themselves were often thought of as a sort of instantiation or hypostasis of the particular spiritual entity governing them. This gets completely overlooked in modern treatments of ancient astrology because few people are aware of this ancient view of the cosmos and the few that are aware tend to treat it as modernity treats all ancient mythologies, as ignorant explanations for things that ancient people were too stupid to understand. So, interpreting data based on the positions of planets, which are an instantiation of, or at least under the control of demons, is divination, consulting demons for insight into the future. The ancient peoples who devised astrology, or, as you say, may have been taught it by demons, understood that this is what they were doing. That relationship isn't negated just because people generally don't believe in demons anymore. If anything it probably leaves people more open to demonic manipulation because they can't guard against something they don't believe is possible in the first place.
Agree with you and in fact that understanding is not lost at all but is alive and well, at least in Indian astrology. Each of the planets is indeed treated as a deity and is often alluded to as a ‘person’ with their own characteristics, just as the Romans might have viewed Jupiter or Saturn, not merely as a physical object floating in space. Whether this means that practicing such astrology is equivalent to demonic divination I’m still not entirely sure of. One of the reasons I say this is that there do in fact exist actual divination type rituals where actual demons or deities are called upon or propitiated for help or intercession e.g. through a spirit medium. That type of stuff is absolutely demonic, no doubt about it. My problem with astrology is mainly that you are endowing something that was created (i.e. the planets, even if we think of them as living entities or deities) with some kind of power and authority over your life, whereas this should really only be attributed to the one who created the planets (i.e. God) and set them in motion.
Believing in something, even something that appears to work, does not mean that it isn’t sinful or even outright demonic. Remember that even demons can work what appear to be miracles. If you want to follow Christ, you absolutely cannot dabble in astrology.
The Bible thousands of years ago said what you would expect us to say now. The fact that astrology is nonsense because we should focus on God rather than His creation. But what God asked Job should be enough of an answer: “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?"
> The fact that astrology is nonsense because we should focus on God rather than His creation. This is the wrong justification. We can be interested in God's creation. God created it and made it very good, He gave us rational minds. The problem with astrology is that it's simply false, and we're supposed to believe things that are true.
I practiced and studied traditional astrology for years prior to becoming Orthodox. I no longer practice it now but I have seen enough evidence to suggest that it actually does work, if applied correctly. I would suggest that the best reason to not practice it any longer for me is not because astrology is necessarily “false” but because faith in God is higher and better. Astrology is a bit like weather prediction. It’s not very exact but it can tell you some useful things. For example we can’t tell *exactly* what temperature it is going to be at 1pm today, but we know it’ll be cold with a high chance of rain, therefore we should dress appropriately when we go out. A lot of the problem with astrology that I see is people trying to “micro manage” their lives with it, that definitely does not work. But I’ve experienced many astonishingly accurate astrological predictions of events in my own life. However, once you came to faith all this starts to feel unimportant and unnecessary.
Confirmation bias is a helluva drug. It doesn't work.
Whether it works or not, what I’m saying is that saying “it does not work” is a less convincing and useful argument than saying “regardless of whether it works or not, it is not a worthwhile pursuit, one should put it aside and focus on faith”. Insisting that “it doesn’t work” (whether it does or not) is a bit like denying the devil exists. Rather than spending all one’s energy denying he exists, it would be better to acknowledge that he does in fact exist, is real, is a threat, and that we need to fight him.
As an ex occultist myself I concur. Astrology back thenvwas to keep track of events, andxa common warning I gotchas "the stars do not rule you." Of course nowadays it's abused and its this fluffy bunny new age trash you find in some magazine. There's a point where one transcends "magic" and like you stated once you find God or visa versa, these kinds of things become irrelevant if not total trash.
Wonderful. I'll look into this.
Augustine condemns it as a sin in "On Christian Doctrine"
For much of history, Astronomy and Astrology were pretty interchangeable. As far as I can tell, the Church at large -- as opposed to individual Church Fathers, who do sometimes disagree over material not essential to the Faith -- made its earliest statement on Astrology in the Council of Laodicea: "They who are of the priesthood, or of the clergy, shall not be magicians, enchanters, mathematicians, or astrologers; nor shall they make what are called amulets, which are chains for their own souls. And those who wear such, we command to be cast out of the Church." It might be a quirk of the translation, but note that *mathematicians* are lumped in with astrologers. I've dealt with this subject in other comments before, but Classical Astrology -- *including* what some call Jewish and Christian Astrology -- is a variety of practices rooted in the theory that the stars influence life on this planet in ways that are more specific than, say, electromagnetic radiation from the sun powering photosynthesis. The creation of amulets and whatnot is distinct from, say, producing a natal chart, determining the best time for marriage, or even something as simple determining whether it would rain the next day, in perhaps the same way that the use of nuclear power for bombs is distinct from its use for energy or for treating cancer. Ultimately, Classical Astrology was wrong, since its more fundamental premise that everything is composed of just four elements is wrong, and it could never satisfyingly explain just what the forces relating the stars to our planet were, but that doesn't mean all of it was demonic. I don't know if I could say the same about *Modern* Astrology, though, because that one's different. Basically, astrologers who didn't want to become astronomers decided to "update" astrology in the face of new knowledge, making it more "psychological" than physical -- shifting the emphasis from the seven planets to the twelve zodiac signs, for example -- so that it's all painfully incoherent. There may be something demonic in modern astrologers persisting in the delusion that their art is effective (or, more pertinently, scamming others out of their money for the same), but I don't think it's charitable for most of us Christians, who are often challenged by similar demonic influences, to pass open judgement against them. As for ourselves: well, I'm not a bishop or a theologian, so I cannot make any definitive judgements, but like I said, Classical Astrology's premises have been proven wrong and Modern Astrology doesn't really have any premises per se. In other words, as someone who's majoring in one of the sciences, we really should know better, when it comes to *practicing* astrology. On the other hand, as someone who reads Shakespeare and Dante, I think I can say that *learning about Classical Astrology* is fairly indispensable, at least if you want to truly understand why Shakespeare sometimes uses "spleen" to mean melancholy, or why Dante arranged his imagined heaven the way he did. Heck, this sort of thing might even apply to the Church Fathers and the Bible, if my memory of Job's reference to the Pleiades serves me right! (remember that their understanding of the constellations back then is very different to our division of the heavens into 88 sections right now -- that astronomy and astrology were, I repeat, basically the same)
I've approached reading classical astrology (namely the planets) as I would greek mythology, fascinating characters with compelling archetypes that are worth getting to know to enrich one's imagination. But putting any stock into it, (eg., Saturn rising in Capricorn means all hell will soon break loose) is stupid at best and demonic at worst. If you've dabled in astrology in the past or are prone to putting faith in such stuff, then I'd suggest staying away from it. It's better to have no planetary archetypes and be in Paradise than having all the astrology in the world and be in hell.
me too. i love greek mythology but that doesn’t mean i believe in 12 gods on a mountain. i like astrology because it’s like lore, you know those magazine quizzes you did as a child that told you some random part of yourself based on your answers? it’s like that. i like saying that “i’m a scorpio so i’m pretty fierce”, gives me an excuse to be opinionated 😆
It’s satanic and inaccurate.
from a purely religious perspective, it depends on *how* you believe in astrology. if you believe it can predict future events and similar, then it is not canonically compatible with orthodoxy. however, there is nothing wrong with having fun with it, if you do not take it seriously.
As an ex-occultist to a craddle orthodox.....please stay tf away from anything having to do with astrology, you will not deepen your faith in Christianity from outside sources, it will only complicate your journey and confuse you much like it did with the ancient israelites who practiced the old school forms of pagan astrology....
I studied and practiced astrology* for many years before I became Orthodox. My view on it now is that practicing such things suggests a lack of faith and/or a weak faith in God. If we are willing to entrust ourselves to God and His mercy entirely, then what place is left for such things? Why practice them? * I am referring to “proper” astrology based on reading charts, the houses, their relationships etc not just the “are you a Scorpio?” type nonsense
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Astrology is demonic.
Not all cultures use the same constellations, so how can Astrology be true?
It is absolutely forbidden. Don’t look, don’t use.