

By the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars. Farmers addressed agricultural needs with increasing knowledge of the constellations that appear in the different seasons-and used the rising of particular star-groups to herald annual floods or seasonal activities. : 81ff This was a first step towards recording the Moon's influence upon tides and rivers, and towards organising a communal calendar. : 2, 3 Early evidence for humans making conscious attempts to measure, record, and predict seasonal changes by reference to astronomical cycles, appears as markings on bones and cave walls, which show that lunar cycles were being noted as early as 25,000 years ago. Ancient worldĪstrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in astrology has largely declined. At the end of the 17th century, new scientific concepts in astronomy and physics (such as heliocentrism and Newtonian mechanics) called astrology into question. It was accepted in political and academic contexts, and was connected with other studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition. Astrological references appear in literature in the works of poets such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer, and of playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

Major astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as court astrologers. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were imported to Europe and translated into Latin.

After the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In Rome, astrology was associated with " Chaldean wisdom". Alexander the Great's conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to Ancient Greece and Rome. Hellenistic astrology after 332 BCE mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian Decanic astrology in Alexandria, creating horoscopic astrology. Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE). The text is dated between 1400 BCE to final centuries BCE by various scholars according to astronomical and linguistic evidences. Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa is one of earliest known Hindu texts on astronomy and astrology ( Jyotisha). A form of astrology was practised in the Old Babylonian period of Mesopotamia, c. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, and Maya developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. The Zodiac Man, a diagram of a human body and astrological symbols with instructions explaining the importance of astrology from a medical perspective. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined, until a resurgence starting in the 1960s. Following the end of the 19th century and the wide-scale adoption of the scientific method, researchers have successfully challenged astrology on both theoretical : 249 and experimental grounds, and have shown it to have no scientific validity or explanatory power. During the Enlightenment, however, astrology disappeared as an area of legitimate scientific pursuit. It was present in political circles and is mentioned in various works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca. Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine.
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Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person's personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Arab world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and some-such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya-developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Astrology has been practiced since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, and has its roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Astrology is a pseudoscience that claims to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects.
