History of Astrology

The history of astrology reconstructs how astrological systems developed and moved between cultures, from Babylonian celestial omen texts through Hellenistic horoscopic astrology into Indian, Chinese and Islamic astronomy, and studies what astrology meant to the astronomers and scholars who practiced it in its own period, rather than judging its predictive claims by modern standards. The historian of ancient science Otto Neugebauer gave the field its rigorous modern footing from the 1950s, most influentially in his 1951 study of ancient astronomy, insisting that Babylonian and Greek astrology be read as a technical, mathematically serious activity inseparable from the astronomy of its time rather than dismissed as primitive superstition unworthy of the same careful philology applied to other ancient science.

The distinction the discipline insists on, describing what astrology meant to the people who practiced it without either defending or debunking its predictive claims, is exactly the stance the atlas takes toward astrology as a living and historical practice. The history of astrology supplies the atlas with dated transmission chains, which culture borrowed which technique from which, and lets astrological entries describe a system's origin and spread as established history rather than as either endorsement or dismissal.